HE GREAT 
ENIGMA 


W.5.LILLY 


1 


4; 
as 
a 


x ot the Theologica Son 


aso 
eS . PRINCETON, N. J.. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/greatenigma0OoOlill 


THE GREAT ENIGMA 


THE GREAT ENIGMA 


Bry WILLIAM SAMUEL “LILLY 


. . of Beot cbévover xm KelywY KpaTay 
vouos’ vouw yap Tovs Geods Hyovueda, 
Kal C@uev, Bika Kal Slav’ wpiopéevor’ 
EURIPIDES 


NEW YORK 
Dee ners i OaN Aen DY COL RA NOY 
1892 


LONDON: 
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS, 


TO 
THE VISCOUNT HALIFAX. 


My pear Lorp Hatirax, 

The book which I now offer to you is of the 
nature of an argumentum ad hominem, addressed 
to a class of readers practically outside the Chris- 
tian pale. It is an inquiry, from their point of 
view, into the tenableness of the religion which for 
more than a thousand years has supplied the fore- 
most nations of the world with an answer to The 
Great Enigma of human existence. Unquestion- 
ably, a feeling that this answer will no longer 
suffice is very widely prevalent. The professed 
teachers of Christianity, from Leo XIII. to 
‘General’ Booth, whatever their differences, 
agree in confessing that its hold over the modern 
mind is rudely shaken. 'The question of questions 
now before mankind is whether ‘“‘the good Lord 
Jesus has had His day”? and must be numbered 
among the dead gods, or whether He is, in very 
truth, alive for evermore, and His life the light 
of men. 

The following pages present, in aid of the 
solution of that question, certain considerations 


(yi =) 


which have proved helpful to me, with special 
reference to the religious difficulties peculiar to 
these times. Possibly, they may be of use to 
some who find themselves unable to employ the 
old theological symbols. In dedicating the book 
to you, by your kind permission, I desire not 
merely to pay a tribute to a deeply prized friend- 
ship, but also to testify my sympathy with much 
of the work done by the movement within the 
Anglican Communion associated, in a special 
way, for many years, with your honoured name : 
a movement which appears to me to have largely 
increased the power for good of the National 
Church as ‘‘a serviceable breakwater ’’—to use 
Cardinal Newman’s happy expression—against the 
abounding impiety of the age. 

Thinking thus of the Church of England, [, 
although not of it, would say with our revered 
friend, whose name I have just written, that ‘TI 
should wish to avoid everything (except, indeed, 
under the direct call of duty, and this is a material 
exception) which went to weaken its hold upon 
the public mind, or to unsettle its establishment, 
or to embarrass and lessen its maintenance of 
those great Christian and Catholic principles and 
doctrines which it has, up to this time, successfully 
preached.” I may add that the movement for 
its disestablishment seems to me one of the most 
retrograde and disreputable manoeuvres of our 
party politics. Itis the common teaching of the 


( vii ) 
masters of political science, from Plato to Hegel, 
that to the perfection of the social organism, 
as of the individuals composing it, religion is 
necessary. Among English writers no one has 
more strongly protested against the repudiation 
of this doctrine than Mr. Gladstone. Thus, in 
his once famous treatise on The State in its 
fielations with the Church, he denounces ‘the 
separation of religion from government, Firstly, 
because it asserts practical atheism, that is a great 
and moral human agency, knowingly, deliberately, 
and permanently divested of regard to God. 
Secondly, because it asserts that atheism in its 
most authentic form, namely, by casting out its 
antagonist, religion, from what are most perma- 
nent and authoritative among men, their public 
politics. Thirdly, because the assertion is made, 
not by individuals alone, but by masses, invested 
with political power, and, under the most wretched 
infatuation, claiming it as a right of freedom thus 
to banish themselves from the Divine protection 
and regard.” No doubt this view no longer domi- 
nates either the general mind, or the mind of the 
distinguished person who thus expressed it with 
the copious and vehement rhetoric of which he is 
a master. But that fact raises no presumption 
whatever against its validity. And those of us 
who decline to recognize in ballot-boxes the sole 
organ of political truth, and in majorities told by 
head the one test of right and wrong in the public 


4 f 


( vn» 

order, are assuredly bound to bear witness to truer 
conceptions of the social organism than such as 
now find popular favour. ‘Things are what they 
are.’ Their nature is not in the least changed 
by the fond wishes of an age which sets up 
expedience as the unique rule of legislation, and 
material well-being as the only end of the State. 

So much to justify my description of the move- 
ment for the disestablishment of the National 
Church as retrograde. I have also called it disre- 
putable. There can be no question at all that the 
number of Englishmen, whatever their speculative 
opinions, who honestly wish to see the Church of 
England disestablished, is inconsiderable. Equally 
beyond question is it that the agitation for that end 
is being forced upon the party now in power by 
‘an insolent and aggressive faction’ animated 
by sectarian hatred. The faction of which I speak 
is, in truth, an amalgam of two sects: the revolu- 
tionary doctrinaires who are inspired by a Jaco- 
binical dislike of Christianity, and that baser por- 
tion of the Dissenting interest—‘‘ most unblest 
phrase,” Coleridge used to call it—whose dominant 
motive is jealousy of the social superiority of the 
Anglican clergy. The wanton sacrifice of a vene- 
rable institution which, apart from its directly 
religious claims, is of great secular utility, as a 
vast organization of charity and a widely effective 
school of moral culture, might well seem to 
politicians not wholly given over to majority- 


( ix) 
mongering, a heavy price to pay for the support 
of the brotherhood of Chadband and Stiggins, and 
their strange allies, the English admirers and 
disciples of Hébert and Chaumette. May we not 
reasonably hope that the event will justify Mr. 
Gladstone’s words, in the treatise from which I 
have quoted: ‘‘Our country seems to promise, at 
least, a more organized, tenacious, and determined 
resistance to the efforts against national religion 
than any other country which is prominent upon 
the great stage of the civilized world ” ? 

I am, my dear Lord Halifax, 
Most sincerely yours, 
AViesste Gli bia 


ATHENEUM C.UB, 
October 22, 1892. 


Fragments of the present work which hace appeared 
in the Quarterly, Fortnightly, and Contemporary Reviews, 
and in the Nineteenth Century, are here reprinted by per- 
mission of the respective editors, whose courtesy I desire to 
acknowledge, with thanks. And I am indebted to my friend, 
the Rev. Dr. William Barry, for his great kindness in reading 
the proof sheets of the book, and in favouring me with various 
sentences and suggestions scattered up and down it. 


Wace te 


SUMMARY. 


CHAPTER I. 


THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. 


Man alone of all animals wonders at his own existence. 
“What am I? Whence am I? Why amI? What 
is my finalend? What the means to it?”—that is 
The Great Enigma with which the generations of 
mortal men have ever been confronted 


The answers have been sought in philosophies and in 
religions 


Causation is, in fact, the great problem both of philosophy 
and of religion; but they approach it from different 
sides : 


The common ground and the last explanation of both 
philosophy and religion are certain great verities, 
bound together in links of necessary thought, which 
render a philosophy of religion possible 


Hitherto the great majority of men have sought the solu- 
tion of The Great Enigma in religions, and in the 
religion which is behind all religions 


PAGE 


xli SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
Religions have explained the human by the superhuman. 


They have contained—even the poorest and lowest 
of them—an ethical element in virtue of which this 
life was viewed, more or less clearly, as a period of 
probation ; : : ; 4 : 4 


But in Christianity this ethical element assumes a very 
different character from what it possesses in any other 
mode of faith. Christianity proclaims that man is 
made and fashioned by the hands of the Divine 
Creator; that he is capable of the perfect felicity of 
the Beatific Vision which is his true end, and that 
the way to that end is by a right ordering of his will 
in this state of moral discipline ; . ; 4 


This is the solution of The Great Enigma taught, in the 
Catechism, to every Catholic child: “Why did God 
make you?—To know Him, love Him, and serve 
Him in this world, and to be happy for ever with 
Him in the next.” To incorporate moral culture with 
religion is among the most important achievements 
of Christianity . 5 é 4 


In the present day, however, religions—Christianity 


among them—are widely supposed to have been 
“foundiout? =~, : : : ; 5 


They are explained by professors of the science of religion 
as the accidents of periods: the poems in which 
man, at sundry times and in divers manners, has 
enshrined his ideals of the Divine, his aspirations 
towards the Unseen . ; : : , 6 


Nor does this explanation stop short at the Christian 
Trinity. The Third hypostasis of the Sacred Triad, 
it will have to be merely the personification of a 


SUMMARY. 


metaphor. The Second it accounts of as the deifica- 
tion, under Platonic influences, of the Son of Mary. 
The First is stripped of the ecumenical attributes 
wherewith He had been invested, and is revealed as 
the national God of a small tribe of Western Semites 


The Sacred Books of Christianity are subjected to a 
criticism which issues in revolutionary views as to 
their date and origin, and which eliminates the super- 
natural element from them 


Moreover, physical science has introduced us to quite 
other conceptions, both of man and of his place in 
the universe, than those more or less closely inter- 
woven with the old theological dogmas 


Doubt is in the air. People can no more escape from it 
than from cholera or influenza 


Nor is the general doubt merely about this or that dogma. 
Unquestionable is it that, as the old creeds have lost 
their hold upon men’s minds, the Theistic conception 
which they more or less worthily enshrined, has 
become faint. Nor, again, is it confined to the 
domain of religion. The scepticism of the age 
extends to all first principles, and is nowhere more 
signally manifested than in the province of ethics 


From one point of view, indeed, it is extremely illogical 
that the decay of religious belief should affect ethical 
convictions, for the spheres of theology and of moral 
philosophy are, in themselves, distinct. The very 
knowledge which we have, by our natural reason, of 
justice and injustice suffices to give rise to a strict 
ethical obligation ; , : : 


But that a rule is conformable with reason is not enough 


Xili 


PAGE 


10 


16 


18 


xiv SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
to ensure obedience to it. The true principle of duty 
for the sake of duty is “too bright and good for 
human nature’s daily food.’ The vast majority of 
men need the prospect of retributive happiness and 
suffering to keep them in the right way : st rad 


Hence the ideas of moral good and evil, and of rewards and 
punishments beyond the grave, properly find place in 
dogmatic religious teaching . : : peo 


Christianity is, and cannot keep from being, a vast 
system of moral discipline. For a thousand years it 
has taught the foremost nations of the world what 
“to believe and to do.” And its rules of action must 
share in the discredit cast upon its articles of faith. 
It is impossible, practically, to view any ethical 
problem apart from The Great Enigma of the meaning 
and end of life which fundamentally underlies all 
morality : : : ; : eae2o 


In the present volume it will first be assumed, for the 
purpose of the argument, that the solution of that 
Enigma presented by Theistic belief, and especially 
by Christianity, is discredited, and the other solutions 
offered us instead will be considered both in their 
theoretical and practical aspects. And then the 
question will be examined whether Theism in general, 
and the Christian religion in particular, are so utterly 
untenable as is very generally contended : . 25 


The book is of the nature of an argumentum ad hominem, 
and is written for the benefit, not of those who agree 
with the author, but of those who do not “ o aeeG 


There are really, in good logic, only two answers, 
besides Theism, to the Great Enigma: Atheism and 


SUMMARY. 


Agnosticism; by Atheism being meant the dogmatic 
denial of God, and by Agnosticism the mental 
attitude of doubt, suspension of judgment, nescience 
concerning Him ; ; ‘ 


And of Agnosticism there are two varieties: the merely 
critical and negative, which maintains that we can- 
not know whether or no a Divine Noumenon exists ; 
and the scientific or affirmative, which asserts His 
existence, but denies that He can be known . ‘ 


CHAPTER II. 
ATHEISM. 


By an Atheist is meant, in this work, one who dogmati- 
cally denies the existence of a First Cause or Creator 
of all things, “ruling the universe and holding 
moral relations with mankind” 


It may be truly objected that such dogmatic denial is 
not, in itself, worth answering, since ‘“‘a demon- 
strative proof of the non-existence of God, assuredly, 
no one ever has found nor will find”. 


But there is a very practical consideration which invests 
Atheism with much importance. It is among the 
masses, who are “as incapable of thinking as they 
are of flying,’ and to whom political power has 
everywhere passed, or is passing, that the propa- 
gandists of Atheism are most active and most 
successful 


xV 


PAGE 


29 


36 


38 


Xvi SUMMARY. 


Their methods differ in different countries, but in all 
worketh one and the selfsame spirit . 5 : 


In Germany, Atheism assumes the form of the crassest, 
coarsest, and most consistent Materialism, and is 
closely allied with Socialism . 


In England it occupies itself chiefly with attacks upon 
the Sacred Books of Christianity, the plenary inspira- 
tion of which is the corner-stone of the popular 
religion 


But France presents the completest view of the Atheistic 
propaganda; and what Atheism is in France, it is in 
the Latin races generally : : ° 


The best revelation of it is afforded by certain Catechisms 
which have been prepared by zealous men as instru- 
ments for the atheizing of that country. Notable 
among these compositions is M. Monteil’s Catéchisme 
du Libre-Penseur, which presents an admirably clear 
account of the dogmas proposed by Atheists in super- 
cession of the old religious and ethical doctrines 


The work is divided into three sections, dealing, respec- 
tively, with God, Religion, and Morals 


God, it teaches, is “‘an expression, the exact value of 
which is the material world, and All is matter” 


It continues that “the divine individuality is a lie;” that 
“we ought not to believe in the existence of the 
individual named God whom most religions have pre- 
sented to us,” because “‘ such a God has no existence ;” 
and that, “since everything belongs to the material 
order, the soul does not exist” 


Religion it pronounces to have “proceeded from the 


PAGE 


38 


38 


39 


41 


44 


48 


SUMMARY. 


foolish deistic hypothesis;” and the Christian 
religion, in particular, it declares ‘“baneful and 
deadly ; in Jehovah as in Jesus, in the Pentateuch as 
in the Gospels:” an exitiabilis superstitio justly pro- 
scribed by the philanthropic pagans of the decadent 
Roman empire. 


It urges, “ Let us abandon religion completely, and take 
refuge in Philosophy—the product of all reason, and 
the source of all morality ” 


The “Philosophy” thus commended amounts to this: 
that man is naturally good: that the passions are 
the true guides of human life: that their gratification 
is the true end of human life: and that other life 
there is none . : - : 


And morality, we are told, is “the sentiment which pre- 
scribes to us prudent conduct, and is determined by 
the reason;” the reason, it would appear, being 
“nothing but phosphorus” 


This is the, New Gospel that the poor have preached to 
them as a substitute for a Theism which reasons of 
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come 


To use the elementary schools as a means for inculcating 
it, has been the cherished object of the antichristian 
sectaries who have so largely obtained political 
power throughout Europe 


They are training the coming generation to believe that 
the answer to The Great Enigma is not moral, but 
material: to put aside faith in the Divine as a 
senseless and servile superstition ; to find the rule of 
right and wrong in self-interest; to see in ethics 
only a regulation of police; to acquiesce in physical 
fatality ; and to practise a brutal egoism 


XVvil 


PAGE 


55 


65 


66 


68 


68 


XVili SUMMARY. 


Such are the human animals, with the wild beast 
unchained in them, which Atheism is rearing as the 
sovereigns of the democratic future . - . 


CHAPTER III. 
CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. 


Of the merely Sceptical or Critical Agnosticism which is 
content with professing nescience of God, no better 
view can be obtained than that which is exhibited 
by M. Renan’s career and writings . : : 


His spiritual history is the spiritual history of millions 
writ large. He used his incomparable literary skill 
to interpret the mind of his generation to itself. And 
this is the chief cause of his influence 


Another cause is his intellectual opulence. A philologist, 
a historian, a philosopher, a publicist, he appealed to 
thoughtful men of every variety of mental character; 
taking them captive by the breadth of his erudition 
and the abundance of his ideas, no less than by the 
magic of his style 


In order to appreciate M. Renan’s influence as a teacher, 
it will be well to inquire first into the intellectual 
constituents of his character. And here much help 
will be derived from his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de 
Jeunesse,—a work, which, as he tells us, he wrote 
“in order to transmit to others the theory of the 
universe which he carries in himself;” which we 
may indeed take as presenting his answer to The 
Great Enigma. 


PAGE 


68 


71 


72 


74 


77 


SUMMARY. 


But all his other writings may, in a true sense, be 
regarded as a commentary upon his autobiography ; 
and there is no reason for questioning his sincerity . 


As a Breton, he possessed a vivid yet chastened and 
inexpansive imagination; while to the Gascon blood, 
which came to him through his mother, he owed 
“une certaine habileté dans l’art d’amener le cliquetis 
des mots et des idées,” and “le penchant 4 trancher 
beaucoup de difficultés par un sourire ” 


Everything in his early years seemed to indicate for him 
a modest ecclesiastical career in Brittany 


And during his time at the Little Seminary of St. Nicholas 
du Chardonnet, no question as to his vocation to the 
priesthood occurred to him 


But in the course of his four years at the Grand Seminary 
of St. Sulpice, the physical sciences — especially 
general natural history and physiology — greatly 
attracted him, and his studies in this department 
shook his confidence in metaphysics 


Later on in his career at the Grand Seminary, he devoted 
himself specially to Theology and Biblical Exegesis, 
and gradually became convinced of the impossibility 
of demonstrating that the Christian religion is, more 
specially than any other, divine and revealed; further, 
it appeared to him certain, that, in the field of reality 
accessible to our observation, no supernatural event, 
no miracle has ever occurred . 


Again, historical facts seemed to him absolutely irrecon- 
cilable with the theory that the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, as they were defined at Trent, or even at 
Niceea, were what the Apostles originally taught 


Xix 


80 


81 


83 


84 


87 


87 


xx SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
While his mind was revolving these matters, he betook 
himself to the study, first of Hebrew, and then of 
German, which introduced him to the new exegesis 
distinctive of the nineteenth century; the result 
being that “the traditional thesis” as to the date, 
authorship, and inerrancy of the Hebrew Sacred 
Books—a thesis which he had been taught to consider 
essential to Christianity—soon grew incredible to 

him ; : ; : ; : PT 3, 


The conclusion of the whole matter for him was that 
“his direct study of Christianity, undertaken in the 
most serious spirit, did not leave him enough faith 
to be a sincere priest; while, on the other hand, it 
inspired him with too much respect to allow of his 
resigning himself to play an odious comedy with 
beliefs most worthy of respect ‘; ; : Aeiiat: 


Ile had the courage of his convictions; and on the 6th 
of October, 1845, he quitted Saint-Sulpice, leaving 
behind him the faith which he had once hoped to 
teach . : : : - : 89 


M. Renan was what he called himself, “un prétre 
manqué:” and the work of his life was to engraft 
modern criticism upon his religious temperament. 

The faith of his childhood dwelt with him as a 
sentiment. Its poetry survived, side by side with the 
criticism which had been fatal to it asa creed. His 
utterances differed, according as it was the poet, or the 
critic, that spoke ; ; ; “ Re) 


He was, in fact, a poet penetrated by the beauty, dominated 
by the majesty of the religious sentiment. He was 
also a critic whose last word was that the Object of the 
religious sentiment—if Object there be—is beyond 


SUMMARY. xxl 


our knowledge: that we can affirm nothing of it, not 
even its existence : ; : : Pi Se 


Buthisscepticism was not confined to the domain of religion. 
In the province of morality he found the same funda- 
mental doubt. Here, too, his first dogma was the 
rejection of all dogmas. ‘Sa pensée de derriére la 
téte, c’est que la vertu, non plus que toute autre chose 
ne supporte examen; on souléve le voile et, Ja 
comme partout, ou découvre qw il n’y a rien dessous.” 
Critical Agnosticism is as fatal to the idea of Duty as 
is the most dogmatic Atheism : : pulse 


His ethical Agnosticism sprung from his religious Agnos- 
ticism. And of his religious Agnosticism he has 
himself given us the history. Like so many others 
in this age, in unlearning Christianity he unlearned 
Theism. He illustrates, in a very striking manner, 
Cardinal Newman’s dictum that “ to deny revelation 
is the way to deny natural religion” . ; . 105 


We have seen that the reasons why he ceased to believe 
in Christianity were, mainly, two: his inability to 
receive “ the traditional thesis” regarding the date, 
authorship, and inerrancy of the Sacred Books of 
Christianity, and his conviction that miracles never 
have happened and never can happen : meld 


With regard to the first of these, it must be frankly 
admitted that if Christianity depended upon a pseudo- 
scientific view of certain venerable documents, formed 
at an unscientific period, and irreconcilable with the 
conclusions of true science, Christianity would be 
doomed : ; : : : jal US 


But to suppose Christianity founded upon that collection 


XXll 


SUMMARY. 


of ancient documents called the Bible is historically 
false. It is certain that no authorized New Testa- 
ment canon existed until the latter half of the second 
century. It is equally certain that the mission of the 
Author of Christianity was not to promote the forma- 
tion of a volume, which, long centuries after, should 
become ‘the religion of Protestants,” but to establish 
a society. The Bible is, in fact, the creation of the 
Catholic Church, from which other varieties of Chris- 
tianity have received it. And the Catholic Church, 
while declaring it in all matters of faith and morals 
divinely inspired throughout, has never pronounced 
how far that inspiration extends—has never formally 
committed herself to “ the traditional thesis,” which 
has come down from uncritical ages 


Next, as to M. Renan’s peremptory declaration that ‘there 


never has been a supernatural fact,’ “ Quod gratis 


5) 


asseritur, gratis negatur,” would, in good logic, be a 


sufficient reply. It is a question of evidence 


M. Renan, in terms, acknowledged this, and professed to 


Bu 


ct 


repudiate the a priort argument. But, as is clear 
from many passages in his writings, he was, consciously 
or unconsciously, under its influence. It was a first 
principle with him that a supernatural fact —a 
miracle—is impossible, because it would be abnormal: 
an infraction of the order of the universe: a violation 
of law . 


everything depends upon what is meant by “ norm,” 
‘“‘order of the universe,’ “law.” The invincible 
prejudice against the miraculous, now so common, is, 
in truth, an expression of that abounding materialism 
which denies the spiritual principle in man and in 


PAGE 


107 


110 


110 


SUMMARY. 


nature, and which, identifying law with physical 
necessity, issues in physical fatalism . 


Again, “ What are miracles for us, that is, what are they 


for the practical use of our understanding, but events 
in the world with the laws of whose working we are, 
and must always remain, utterly unacquainted ?” 


That such events have occurred, and do occur, seems abso- 


lutely certain; and when intelligent men are found 
dogmatically asserting that they do not occur, we can 
only suppose that these dogmatists have not looked 
into the evidence, or that they are under the influence 
of a first principle which disqualifies them for 
weighing it 


M. Renan constantly speaks of the miraculous as “ irra- 


tional” and “absurd.” But “irrational ” means 
contrary to reason; “absurd” means contradictory, 
impossible. Do we assert that which is contrary to 
reason, or contradictory, or impossible, when we say 
that there are events with the laws of whose working 
we are, and ever must remain, unacquainted ? 


The criticism whereon M. Renan founded the Agnosticism 


of which we have taken him as a typical exponent, 
is inadequate to support the vast edifice of doubt 
which he reared upon it 


CHAPTER IV. 


SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. 


The Scientific Agnosticism, which is the subject of this 


chapter, will be best viewed as exhibited by Mr. 
Herbert Spencer, who is generally recognized as its 
most complete and methodical expositor ‘ : 


XXlli 


PAGE 


1il 


111 


112 


115 


Le 


XXIV SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
Mr. Spencer bestows upon his speculations the name of 


“The Synthetic Philosophy;” and philosophy he 
defines as “completely unified knowledge;” his 
Scientific Agnosticism proposes to give a solution of 
The Great Enigma: to explain the source of life, the 
meaning of life, the end of life, and the conduct of 
Life." yer. : : ; : : WAU 


The foundation of Mr. Spencer’s philosophy is the dis- 
tinction between the Unknowable and the Knowable. 
The sentiment of a First Cause, infinite and absolute, 
he considers the eternal and secure basis of all 
religion. This Deity, whom, hidden more or less 
under anthropomorphic disguises, the votaries of all 
creeds ignorantly worship, declares he unto them as 
“The Unknowable” . , é ‘ Mao 


Next, turning to the physical sciences, he regards all 
forces as manifestations of the dynamic energy every- 
where diffused, which co-ordinates the whole range 
of phenomena, past, present, and future: an energy 
the essence of which escapes us. Thus the last 
word of physical science, as of religion, is that “the 
Power which the Universe manifests to us is inscru- 
table:” and in “the ultimate truth” of The Un- 
knowable he finds “the basis of their reconciliation” 122 


We can know, he holds, in the strict sense of knowing, 
only the phenomenal manifestations of The Unknow- 
able, and these we can know only as purely relative 
and subjective realities. ‘ Even the highest achieve- 
ments of science are resolvable into mental relations 
of co-existence and sequence, so co-ordinated as 
exactly to tally with certain relations of co-existence 
and sequence that occur externally ” . é vei 128 


SUMMARY. XXV 


PAGE 
These manifestations, “called by some ‘impressions’ and 


999 


“ideas,” Mr. Spencer prefers to distinguish as 
“vivid” and « faint;” manifestations that occur 
under the conditions of sensuous perception being 
“faint,” and such as occur under the conditions 
known as those of reflection, or memory, or imagina- 


ion, or ideation beine Vivi : ‘ : f 
tion, deat being “ ra ie 123 


“This profoundest of distinctions between the manifesta- 
tions of The Unknowable,” he continues, “‘ we recog- 
nize by grouping them into self and non-self. These 
faint manifestations, forming a continuous whole, 
differing from the others in the quantity, quality, 
cohesion, and condition of existence of its parts, we 
call the ego: and these vivid manifestations indis- 
solubly bound together in relatively immense masses, 
and having independent conditions of existence, we 
call the non-ego'; or rather, and more truly, each order 
of manifestations carries with it the irresistible 
implication of some power that manifests itself; and 
by the words ego and non-ego respectively, we mean 
the power that manifests itself in the faint forms, 
and the power that manifests itself in the vivid 
forms” fe : ‘ é Se Es 


“The totality of my consciousness,” he further writes, 
“is divisible into a faint aggregate which I call my 
mind ; a special part of the vivid aggregate cohering 
with this in various ways, which I call my body; 
and the rest of the vivid aggregate which has no 
such connection with the faint aggregate. This 
special part of the vivid aggregate, which I call my 
body, proves to be a part through which the rest of 
the vivid aggregate works changes in the faint, 
and through which the faint works certain changes 


XXVl 


Mr. 


SUMMARY. 


in the vivid.’ And, ‘the root-conception of exist- 
ence, beyond consciousness, becomes that of resist- 
ance, plus some force which the resistance measures ‘i 


Spencer’s philosophy, in fact, requires as “a pri- 
mordial proposition,” as ‘“‘a datum,” the acceptance 
of these two separate aggregates, as constituting the 
world of consciousness, and the world beyond con- 
sciousness, and the ascription of both to the action 
of one single cause, which he terms, The Unknow- 
able. Thus is “the unification of science complete,” 
and “ philosophy reaches its goal” 


. Spencer’s theory may be shortly and accurately 


described as an attempt to find the solution of the 
problem of the universe in a sole law: the persistence 
of force under multiform transformations. Physical 
forces, vital forces, mental forces, social forces, are all 
only different manifestations of the selfsame force. 
Cosmology, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Ethics— 
all are to be explained by the persistence, under 
various modifications, of that manifestation of The 
Unknowable. The Spencerian philosophy is, in fact, 
a vast system of speculative physics 


There are three fundamental doctrines upon which it 


rests: his doctrine of Causation, of the Relativity of 
Knowledge, and of The Unknowable. Hach will be 
examined in detail 


First, then, as to Causation. The unity of natural forces 


is by no means established, and the correlation of 
mental and physical forces is a mere nude hypo- 
thesis. No equivalence can be shown between 
neurosis and psychosis; nor can life and energy be 
brought under Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of the Per- 


PAGE 


124 


124 


125 


129 


SUMMARY. XXVli 


PAGE 
sistence of Force, which, as taught by him, is an 
amalgam of physical dogmatism and metaphysical 
error . ‘ : ‘ ‘ ‘ wt29 


Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge is, 
in substance, this: “That what we are conscious of 
as properties of matter, even down to its weight and 
resistance, are but subjective affections produced by 
objective agencies that are unknown and unknow- 
able.” But perception is a much more delicate 
matter than Mr. Spencer imagines. Passive sensa- 
tion does not constitute knowledge in the true sense. 
The instrument of knowledge is thought. There is 
a perception of sense: there is an analytical inter- 
pretation, an intellectual appropriation of that per- 
ception. The idea which the intellect obtains 
concerning its various objects is not wholly relative. 
Mr. Spencer ignores the fact that the relations of 
things are rational; that is, that they possess an 
element of objectivity. He does not recognize the 
category of Being : . : : 2 9135 


Next as to The Unknowable, Mr. Spencer teaches that 
“though the Absolute cannot in any manner or 
degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet 
we find that its positive existence is a necessary 
datum of consciousness: that, so long as conscious- 
ness continues, we cannot for an instant rid ourselves 
of this datum: and that thus the belief which this 
datum constitutes, has a higher warrant than any 
other whatever.” But the very nature of intelligence 
forbids such a conception of the Absolute as this. 
All knowledge, according to Mr. Spencer, is relative. 
Jt is rigidly restricted to phenomena. If this is so, 
if our knowledge is limited to conditioned experience, 


XXVIll SUMMARY. 


we cannot possibly know, in any sense of knowing, 
the unconditioned. All consciousness, according to 
Mr. Spencer, is constituted under forms and limits: 
it belongs to the phenomenal order. That is for him 
the one mode of consciousness. If you abolish the 
limits, you abolish the consciousness 


The truth is, that as Mr. Spencer’s erroneous theory of 


But 


relativity has led him to label the Supreme Object 
of knowledge Unknowable, so a true theory of 
relativity would have saved him from the antinomies 
in which he is hopelessly involved with regard to 
this matter, The more the manifold relations of 
things are examined, the more clearly are they seen 
to be rational: they testify of Objective Reason. 
Mr. Spencer’s Scientific Agnosticism is an outrage 
upon reason. He puts aside the self-affirmations 
of the intellect—those a priori or necessary truths 
which are laws of thought because they are absolute 
uniformities, intuitively known as self-evident—and 
these are the primary sources of all knowledge; they 
are “what God eternally thinks.” In them, and 
not in any collocation and displacement of molecules, 
is the ultimate basis of metaphysics 


Mr. Spencer’s Scientific Agnosticism is not merely 
speculative. He preaches new morals as well as a 
new faith. He considers that since “ moral injunc- 
tions are losing the authority given by their sup- 
posed sacred origin, the secularization of morals, the 
establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific 
basis, is a pressing need,” lest “ by the disappearance 
of the code of supernatural ethics” a moral “ vacuum ” 
should ensue 


PAGE 


145 


157 


SUMMARY. Xx1x 


PAGE 
Mr. Spencer, however, greatly errs—as has been pointed 
out in Chapter J.—in supposing transcendental 
moralists to regard divine commands as the only 
possible guides in morals. The old data of ethics 
which have guided the civilized world for so many 
generations are not “ supernatural,” though they are 

supersensuous . : ‘ : ° om tos 


This, by the way. We proceed to examine that “ fitter 
regulative system of conduct” which Mr. Spencer 
invites mankind to accept : : : a 161 


There are, in truth, only two great schools in ethics. 
There is the school which seeks to ascertain morality 
from the spiritual nature of man by methods purely 
rational. There is the school which denies the 
transcendental ground of man’s being, and which 
seeks to derive morality from his animal nature, by 
methods merely physical. There is the school which 
finds the real aboriginal principle of morals in pleasure 
or agreeable feeling. There is the school which finds 
it in intuitions of equity, held to be primordial and 
independent elements of our nature . : of, eLOE 


There can be no question to which of these schools 
Mr. Spencer belongs. His philosophy, viewed as a 
whole, is, as we have seen, an attempt to construct a 
complete scheme of the universe by means of the 
persistence, under various transformations, of that 
manifestation of the Unknowable which he calls 
Force; to unify knowledge of phenomena, the only 
knowledge held by him to be possible, and to trace 
everywhere the one cosmical processus. ‘* Moral 
phenomena ” he considers as phenomena of evolution ; 
and he expressly tells us that “a redistribution of 
matter and motion constitutes evolution.” He attempts 


XXX SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
to construct a science of morals out of physical 
elements by means of his one formula : eer G2 

Such is Mr. Spencer’s method in moral philosophy. We 
proceed to consider his application of it, and to see 
how he manufactures morality from prior conditions 
that were unmoral : : : : ela 


He tells us “ Ethics has for its subject-matter that form 
which universal conduct assumes, during the last 
Stage of its evolution.” By “conduct” he means 
“acts adjusted to ends, or else the adjustment of acts 
to ends.” And “always acts are called good or bad, 
as they are well or ill adjusted to ends.” Conduct 
which subserves “ the welfare of self, of offspring, 
and of fellow-citizens” “is regarded as relatively 
good:” but “evolution becomes the highest possible 
when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest 
totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow- 
men:” the reason being that in Mr. Spencer’s 
philosophy life is regarded as the highest good a uel Ge 


Moral good, then, according to Mr. Spencer, does not 
differ essentially from physical good. The goodness of 
a hunter and the goodness of a hero, the goodness of 
a sausage and the goodness of a saint, are for Mr. 
Spencer, in kind, identical. And the test of goodness 
is always the same: not the character of the agent, 
not the quality of his intention, but the pleasur- 
able tendency of his acts. Virtue possesses for Mr. 
Spencer no primordial and independent character. | 
It is whatever, as a means, promotes, on the whole, 
the supreme end—pleasure : : ALG 


This is Mr. Spencer’s treatment of the fundamental 
question wherewith ethics is concerned: the nature 


SUMMARY. >> 9.4! 


PAGE 
of moral good: the difference between right and 
wrong. Further, he believes “that the experiences 
of utility organized and consolidated through all 
past generations of the human race, have been pro- 
ducing corresponding nervous modifications, which, 
by continued transmission and accumulation, have 
become in us certain faculties of moral intuition— 
certain emotions responding to right and wrong con- 
duct, which have no apparent basis in the individual 
experiences of utility.” “The moral motive,” he lays 
down, “is constituted by representations of con- 
sequences which the acts naturally produce.” “These 
are the restraints properly distinguished as moral.” 
And “since with the restraints thus generated is 
always joined the thought of external coercion, there 
arises the notion of obligation ;” a notion which he 
afterwards interprets as equivalent to the indispen- 
sableness of any means towards a given end,—the 
means being that which we are obliged to employ, 
if we would secure the end . : ; - 170 


He further pronounces it “evident” that when the human 
machine is perfected by evolution, “that element in 
the moral consciousness which is expressed by the 
word obligation will disappear,’ and “the moral 
sentiments will guide men just as spontaneously as 
do now the sensations ” : ‘ : . 174 


Upon these fundamental positions of the “ fitter regulative 
system” proposed to us by Scientific Agnosticism in 
the place of the rule of right and wrong hitherto 
received, it may be observed— 

First, that there is an absolute contradiction between 
Mr. Spencer’s hedonistic morality and his great law 
ofevolution . ‘ ; : ‘ ~ 1t5 


XXxll SUMMARY. 


Secondly, that Mr. Spencer’s teaching depends, essentially, 


upon quite arbitrary assumptions 


Thirdly, that Mr. Spencer’s moral philosophy is hopelessly 


vitiated by his misapprehension of the subject where- 
with such philosophy is concerned—moral goodness . 


Fourthly, that it is no less fatal to the concept of moral 


The 


Mr. 


obligation than it is to the concept of moral goodness 


“fitter regulative system” which Scientific Agnosti- 
cism proposes to substitute for the old data of ethics 
is a mere abortion of moral philosophy ; just as its 
doctrine of The Unknowable is a mere abortion of 
natural theology 


Spencer’s portentous generalities, with their integra- 
tions and disintegrations, leave the mystery of “ the 
immeasurable world” precisely where they found it. 
The key to the problem of existence is not sensation, 
but personality. And it is to be sought, not in the 
charnel-house of Physics, but in the spiritual temple 
of Reason 


CHAPTER V. 


RATIONAL THEISM. 


The next step in the present inquiry is, whether Theism 


is, in fact, so hopelessly discredited as is frequently 
and confidently alleged - : ° ° 


The antitheistic current of contemporary thought is a 


PAGE 


178 


182 


190 


196 


199 


200 


a ee 


SUMMARY. XXX 


sort of intellectual epidemic. The vast majority of 
those who are infected by it could give no coherent 
account of their scepticism 


It is, no doubt, largely due to the stupendous advance 
of the experimental sciences. And this is natural 
enough, For those sciences dwell in the sphere of 
physical uniformity. They are nothing but a know- 
ledge of the relative; and exclusive devotion to them 
tends to shut out the idea of a First Cause 


Existence presents two problems—the how and the why. 
To explain the how of things, we must discover these 
uniformities of sequence or co-ordination which we 
call their laws. That is the province of physics. 
And with all beyond that, physical science, as such, 
is not concerned 


But contemporary masters of physical science often display 
a desire, and more than a desire, to bring everything 
within its boundaries; to restrict our ideas to generali- 
zations of phenomena; to erect experimental observa- 
tion into the sole criterion of certitude 


No doubt there is a true, a close analogy, between 
physical and intellectual laws, both being manifesta- 
tions of the same Reason. But it is most necessary 
to resist the application—misapplication—of the 
physiological method to the mental and moral order : 
the claim that purely intellectual questions shall be 
determined by the laws of matter 


In this chapter the special character of the antitheistic 
current of thought, in these days, will be specially 
kept in view. The reader will be asked to consider 
first what are the reasons specially urged why we 


PAGE 


200 


201 


205 


XXXIV SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
should abandon Theism; and next, what Reason, 
freely exercised according to the methods now 
specially prized, and without any reference to 
systems of religion professing to be revealed, makes 
evident, unless we stultify its teaching, concerning 
the existence and character of the Supreme Reality . 206 


We are told that if men will go on believing in God, it is 
‘cin spite of science and the laws of consciousness.” 
We will proceed to see what reasons in support of the 
antitheistic argument “science and the laws of con- 
sciousness” supply . 4 : ; 2 5208 


The antitheistic argument from physical science specially 
relied on, in the present day, is the argument from 
the apparent failure and waste in the phenomenal 
world. We are told, “The early glimpses of the 
marvels of Nature afforded by modern science un- 
doubtedly were favourable to natural theology in the 
first instance. Knowledge revealed so many wonders 
which had not been suspected by ignorance, that a 
general increase of reverence and awe for the Creator 
was the natural though not very logical consequence. 
But a deeper philosophy, or rather biology, has dis- 
turbed the satisfaction with which ‘the wisest and 
most exquisite ends’ were once regarded. It is now 
known that for one case of successful adaptation of 
means to ends in the animal world, there are hun- 
dreds of failures. If organs which serve an obvious 
end justify the assumption of an intelligent designer, 
what are we to say of organs which serve no ends at 
all, but are quite useless or meaningless?” . a Ws 


In answer to this it may be said— 
First, that though we may not be able to argue, solely from 
the phenomena of the physical world, to an absolutely 


SUMMARY. 


wise and all-powerful First Cause, yet the progress of 
physical science has not disproved, and does not tend 
to disprove, thought, order, purpose . 


Secondly, that, in strictness, there is no such thing as 
failure known to us, because there may be always 
ends which are hidden from our eyes. We can affirm 
order, because that is a thing positive. But to affirm 
disorder, absolute and final, is like attempting to 
prove a negative 


Thirdly, that theories borrowed from the economical 
schools of the day are not the proper measure of 
finality in the universe: nor can the standard sup- 
plied by Utilitarianism be accepted as the rule of all 
things in heaven and earth 


Fourthly, that the doctrine of organic evolution does not 
in the least conduct us to the necessity of modern 
phenomenists as the true explanation of the universe. 
Necessity is a question-begging word. If blind 
necessity is meant, such necessity assuredly could 
not produce the diversity, the succession, the return 
of phenomena. But if necessity is not blind it is 
merely another name for law; and law implies an 
abiding and unchanging self, a spiritual principle 


Fifthly, that the question of a First Cause is one with 
which the physicist, as such, is not concerned. His 
domain is the sphere of sense perception 


Next, the antitheistic argument from the laws of conscious- 
ness amounts to this: that the antithesis of subject 
and object, never to be transcended while conscious- 
ness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of the 
Ultimate Reality, in which subject and object are 
transcended; that we can believe in a Divine con- 


XXXV 


PAGE 


211 


212 


213 


XXXV1 SUMMARY. 


sciousness only by refraining from thinking what is 
meant by consciousness, and that the condition of 
believing in a Divine will is similar . 


But this argument is vitiated hopelessly and radically— 

First, by assumptions, of the most arbitrary @ priori de- 
scription, concerning the Ultimate Reality, whose 
existence and attributes reason seeks in some degree 
to know 


Secondly, by utter misconception of what is meant by the 
faculty of abstraction . : : ° 


\, Thirdly, by failure to apprehend the essential nature of 
intellect 


We go on to the next point: What grounds for belief in 
God are afforded by reason freely exercised, according 
to the methods specially prized in these days? 


It must be frankly admitted that the strongest grounds 
for such belief are inexpressible, because they trans- 
cend the logical understanding. But we may claim 
to have done enough in satisfaction of the debt which 
we owe to all men, if we show that our faith, so far 
from being unreasonable, does, in fact, sum up the 
conclusions to which reason points; that the language 
in which we clothe it, although infinitely inadequate, 
is the nearest approximation to the truth possible 
to us 


Let us start, then, from the way of thinking just now so 
much in credit. The popular philosophy of the day 
is a philosophy of relativity, employing as its most 
valued instrument comparative analysis. No doubt, 
to reduce the complex to the simple, the phenomenon 
to the law, the special law to the general law, is, so 


PAGE 


214 


217 


218 


219 


220) 


220 


SUMMARY. XXXVIi 


PAGE 
far as it goes, an explanation. And if universal 
being were merely monotonous and _ inflexible 
mechanism, such would be the whole explanation. 
But universal being is not merely that. It is also 
organic. And the tendency of lower forms to pass 
into higher, implies something else than mechanism ; 
a system of definite directions is merely a synonym 
for finality 


bo 
bo 
a 


Correlation cannot be essence. It is a logical impossi- 
bility for the Relative to exist alone. It presupposes 
the Absolute. To the Absolute the whole series of 
relative realities tends. , : : Bee? 


Phenomena, apprehensible by the senses, must have a 
reason which is not a phenomenon, and which there- 
fore is ‘“ beyond the probe of chemic test” . . 223 


If it be objected, from Kant, that the principle of causality 
is purely subjective, and that we must not venture 
with the speculative reason beyond the lmits of 
sensible experience, the reply is that though the 
subject imposes its own form on knowledge and 
makes it subjective, subjectivism does not neces- 
sarily follow from this. The phenomena of the ex- 
ternal world are not merely abstract signs, like 

_ algebraic symbols. They are instinct with life: 
they obey law: they are disposed in a wonderful 
order. The life, the law, the order, demand explana- 
tion. And for this explanation the principle of 
causality is necessary. “It is by an @ prior? axiom 
of the understanding, that we apply the causal 
relation to the external world” : ; - 223 


If Kant’s teaching be viewed as a whole, it cannot be 
believed that he held the law of causation to be 


XXXVill SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
wholly subjective. Nor is there any way out of 


Nihilism for his disciples, save to take the Supreme 
Principle which is beyond sensible experience, and 
to build on that ; ; , : 225 


What, then, can we know about this Supreme Principle ? 
this Ultimate Reality? As we saw in the last chap- 
ter, Mr. Spencer, while pronouncing it Unknowable, 
predicates of it not only being, but causal energy, 
eternity, omnipotence; recognizes it as “the basis 
of intelligence,” and holds it to be ‘“ manifested” 
“through phenomena,” to our “ consciousness.” Let 
us see what these manifestations amount to . . 225 


What does the external universe manifest to our conscious- 
ness of the Power which, as Mr. Spencer tells us, 
“persists unchanging under these sensible appear- 
ances?” If we look around us and above us, we find 
everywhere what we term mind and matter. Surely 
we may say with Fénelon that the Ultimate Reality 
“igs not indeed mind or matter, but is all that is 
essential in mind and matter” : . ot, 


What is essential in mind is reason. And if there is any 
lesson taught more clearly than another by the re- 
cent researches of physicists, it is the intelligibility 
of the universe. Reason everywhere—such is the 
lesson which we see writ large in Nature. Its laws 
are identical with the laws of the human intellect. 
Reason is the constituent element of reality. And 
does not this point to the Supreme Cause as Objective 
Reason? Surely it is an irrational doctrine that the 
unintelligible is the primary source of the intel- 
ligible . ‘ : . : : »| 229 


Reason, then, the essence of mind, is what sensible phe- 
nomena disclose to us, ever more clearly. And what 


SUMMARY. XXXIxX 


PAGE 
is essential in matter? It is given us only as the 
union of two forces—the force of expansion and the 
force of attraction. It is the visibility of force ot 20k 


But force is only a resultant ; nor, if we go by experience, 
have we knowledge of any other primary cause of 
force than volition. This is the only possible name 
under which we can gather up the mighty forces 
ever energizing throughout the universe. Matter, 
therefore, is merely a manifestation of Will . . 231 


Reason and Will are inseparably united in the universe 
as they are in idea. But the union of reason and 
will it is which constitutes personality : . 232 


This is perhaps as far as external nature enables us to 
go. But the phenomena of the external world are 
not the only channels through which the Ultimate 
Existence is manifested to consciousness. We must 
also take into account the lessons of what the some- 
what slipshod language of the day calls “mental 
phenomena.” Mr. Spencer tells us that the Ultimate 
Existence is “the basis of our intelligence.” Let us 
see what our intelligence tells us concerning its 
basis. 


bo 
(Se) 
bo 


What is the primary fact which the intellect reveals to 
us, aS soon as the act of thinking takes place in 
our own consciousness? Unquestionably it is the 
distinction of self and non-self. And, as unquestion- 
ably, this distinction ig accompanied by the idea of 
moral obligation. It is also matter of fact that the 
source of that obligation has ever been felt to lie in 
a mysterious and hyper-physical Entity whereon 
man depends . , : . : . 234 


d 


xl 


SUMMARY. 


This is the common factor of all creeds, They all pro- 


claim, however rude or refined, grotesque or sublime 
their symbolism, the absolute dominion of the moral 
law, as a perpetual obligation binding upon all 
possible intelligent beings, and therefore, as a 
Transcendental Reality, a manifestation of the 
Eternal under the condition of time. They point to 
the Ultimate Reality which is “the basis of our 
intelligence” as law moral! . 


It appears, then, that as external phenomena manifest to 


But 


our consciousness the Ultimate Reality as Law, 
which is another name for the union of Reason and 
Will, wherein consists Personality, so do “ mental 
phenomena” also, adding this further revelation first 
of all: that the Law is just, the Reason right, the 
Will ethical, the Person holy . 


further: the primary fact revealed to us by reason, 
as soon as the act of thinking takes place in our 
consciousness, is the distinction of self and non-self. 
Intellect, then, manifests to me myself. The per- 
ception of selfhood is the very fundamental interior 
fact of which I am conscious. The Ego, upon its 
own self-testimony, is a something which is one, 
identical, permanent, rational, volitional, and free— 
not, of course, absolutely, but relatively free—a 
something which is the principle and cause of our 
acts. But these facts are manifestations to our 
“eonsciousness” of the Ultimate Reality, which is 
“the basis of our intelligence.” And they manifest 
that Reality as possessing, in some transcendent 
and incomprehensible way, those qualities which 
are the self-affirmations of the intellect: Substance, 
Causality, Being, and all else included in the 
metaphysical conception of Personality 


PAGE 


234 


237 


238 


SUMMARY. 


If it is objected that there is a contradiction in con- 


ceiving the Absolute as personal, the answer is that 
personality does not mean limitation. In the proper 
sense of the word, Personality—Fiir-sich-sein—can 
be predicated only of the Infinite. « Ipse suum 
esse est.” Perfect selfhood means immediate self- 
existence. The idea of Personality, like all ideas, is 
realized only in that Self-Existent—the Original of 
all existence—which transcends those ideas, indeed, 
but in transcending, includes them 


may say, then, that the Ultimate Reality is mani- 
fested to our consciousness as the Original of the 
law physical, which rules in the phenomenal world, 
and of the law moral written on the fleshly tables 
of the heart; as the Supreme Good, in whom all 
ideas are realized; as the First Cause and Final End 
of the universe, where all is causation and finality ; 
as the Self-Existent, and therefore a Person, or 
rather the Person, from whom all personality is an 
effluence ; as “the basis of our intelligence,” of all 
intelligence. Such are the conclusions which we 
must accept upon the testimony of intellect. The 
only alternative is to deny the validity of intellect 
altogether 


It may indeed be objected that the conception of God 


involves us in invincible antinomies. No doubt that 
is so. We should remember, however, that while in 
the finite contradictories are in opposition, in the 
Absolute they find their union : ; : 


It must not for a moment be supposed that our human 


and relative notions are the measure of the Absolute 
and Divine. The Infinite and Eternal is not “a 
magnified, non-natural man;” nor can our speech do 


xli 


PAGE 


241 


242 


244. 


xhi SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
more than most dimly adumbrate Him. All our 
words, essentially phenomenal and relative, are but 
sensuous symbols of the great Noumenal Fact. But 
surely there is some mean between knowing all 
about a thing and knowing nothing about it. . 244 


The popular god, in all religions, is a thing of shreds and 
patches, a vice of gods, and cannot possibly be other. 
Still, we are too apt to undervalue that exceeding 
great multitude of people who are simply good and 
religious-minded, wholly undisturbed by Theistic 
problems, They are not intellectually considerable. 

But to them are ofttimes revealed things hidden 
from the wise and prudent . ‘ : . 246 


Unquestionably, of all those problems the most terrible 
is the existence, not of the Absolute, but of the 
Perfect Being. It is hard to conceive how the 
Supreme Self, in whose unmoved and immovable 
calm all ideals are realized, could have become an 
active cause. It is infinitely harder to conciliate the 
existence of a Perfect Creator or First Cause with 
the existence of such a world as this . fs . 249 


Nor is there any alleviation of the burden and the 
mystery save in the certitude that justice rules the 
world, and that we can follow the law within. In 
this certitude the wisest and best of our race have 
ever found “amid the encircling gloom” “a light 
unto their feet.” That light will be spoken of in 
the next chapter 


1) 
Or 
[o\e) 


SUMMARY. xliil 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE INNER LIGHT. 
PAGE 


Mysticism is the proper complement of the Rational 
Theism considered in the last chapter; its office to 
point from the phenomenal to the noumenal, from 
that which seems to that which is. It is based upon 
the indubitable fact, that the spirit of man comes in 
direct contact with the Supreme Object, to which 
neither the senses nor the logical understanding can 
attain: whose manifestations carry with them their 
own proof, and are moral in their nature, are out of 
time and place, are enlightening, purifying, and are 
therefore, in a true sense, ascetic ; é t Zo 


Or 


In this chapter the four chief systems in which the 
mystical doctrine has been clothed will first be sur- 
veyed; and then the especial significance of the 
expression which it has found in modern philosophy 
will be considered : : : : i 206 


The most perfect specimen of Hindu mystic philosophy 
is the Katha Upanishad, in which Yama, answering 
the questions of Nakiketas concerning “the Self 
and that which dwells in the Great Hereafter,” 
expounds the doctrine of Atman—infinite, invisible, 
divine; life of the world and life of our life; of 
whom many are not able to hear; whom many, even 
when they hear of Him, do not comprehend; and 
who is reached, not by the Veda, not by under- 
standing, not by much learning, but only through 
the spiritual insight of him who has ceased from 
evil, and who is concentrated, and whose mind is 
quiescent : 2 : : , « 256 


xliv SUMMARY, 


Greek mysticism is substantially the development of the 
same thought, from its earliest expression by 
Pythagoras to its full development by the Neo- 
Platonists , } 5 : : : 


And the root idea of Moslem mysticism is identical with 
the root idea of the Upanishads 


The fourth great mystical school—the Christian—is clearly 
marked off from these three other schools, which are 
all more or less Pantheistic, by its}doctrines of the 
Trinity and creation . 


Still, Christian, like all other mysticism, aims at grasping 
the Ultimate Reality, at direct communion with the 
Highest ; and professes to open a way of escape from 
the blinding tyranny of sense, to transcend the veil 
of illusory phenomena, and to set free its votaries 
by an inward vision. Its central doctrine is that 
which is so emphatically enforced by the great non- 
Christian schools of mysticism, that the Being of 
Beings is cognizable only by the purified mind : 


At first the Supreme Reality appears to the inner eye as 
darkness, whence Dionysius the Carthusian tells us, 
“‘ Mystica theologia est ardentissima divini caliginis 
intuitio.” This apparent darkness is, however, in 
itself light, dazzling and blinding in its splendour, 
and it gradually becomes visible as such, when the 
spiritual vision is purged and strengthened and 
renewed by the stripping off of all love for the 
relative, the dependent, the phenomenal, and by the 
assiduous practice of all moral virtues 


To this Purgative way succeeds the Illuminative way, 
and to that the Unitive way, whereby the soul attains 
to that union with its Supreme Object which is called 
‘transformation ” 


PAGE 


265 


265 


267 


268 


SUMMARY. xlv 


PAGE 
The dangers incident to mysticism are obvious: on the 
one side lie the deep gulfs of madness: on the other, 

the abysses of sensuality : . : - 269 


It is, however, a fact, worthy of being deeply pondered, 
that in the Catholic Church mysticism has been 
incomparably more healthy, more sober, more beauti- 
ful, than anywhere else. Her symbolism, historical, 
social, visible, has provided for its highest aspirations 
congruous expression, and restrained them within the 
bounds that may not be passed in this phenomenal 
world. While as the type of Christian mysticism, 
practically exhibited “for human nature’s daily 
food,” it is enough to point to The Imitation of Christ. 270 


Noteworthy, too, is it that when the paramount authority 
of dogmatic theology has been lost sight of, the 
speculations of medieval and modern transcenden- 
talists have usually issued in Nihilistic Pessimism . 270 


Our present concern is, however, with the normal aspects 
of mysticism which is a fact of human nature, 
exhibited at all times in history, and confronting us 
to-day. We go on to inquire what is the peculiar 
significance of contemporary mysticism, when viewed 
in the light—or darkness—of modern philosophical 
speculation  . : : : : acne 


European thought, after a century of not very fruitful 
wanderings, is going back to Kant. His Critique of 
Pure Reason deals precisely with the question, What 
are the limits of sane affirmation ? Without entering 
upon an examination of that work, and assuming, 
for the sake of the present argument, that its theory 
of cognition is substantially correct, where are we 
in regard to The Great Enigma of which man ever 


xlvi 


The 


SUMMARY. 


seeks the solution? the question which Nakiketas put 
to Yama about the Self and that which dwells in the 
Great Hereafter? 


Critique of Pure Reason is essentially a doctrine of 
nescience. The human understanding, Kant insists, 
is shut up within the circle of our sensations. These 
reveal to it merely phenomena. And beyond pheno- 
mena all is a void for it. Noumena may exist, or 
they may not exist. All that is certain is that no 
faculty of the human understanding can discover 
anything about them. The issue clearly is to anni- 
hilate dogmatism, affirmative or negative, and to 
warn us against venturing with the speculative reason 
beyond the limits of experience 


The effect of this doctrine upon the ordinary “ proofs of 


99 


is evident. Kant insists that 
no unity of thought and being is knowable save the 
unity of experience, and that this is the sole realiza- 
tion, cognizable by the speculative reason, of the 
ideal to which men have ascribed the name of God . 


the existence of Goc 


Thus does Kant lead us into what may be called “the 


dark night of the soul.” The Critique of Pure Reason 
presents a striking parallel to the Via Purgativa of the 
mystics. The illusoriness of the phenomenal world, 
the impotency of the mere understanding to pene- 
trate beyond it to the vision of a Reality transcend- 
ing sense—these are its main lessons. Kant employs 
the word noumenal to express a limitary conception. 
He gives it a negative use. But it is worthy of notice 
that this is pretty much the sum of the knowledge 
of God to which, as the mystics of all schools teach, 
we can attain by means of the phenomenal order. 


PAGE 


273 


The 


The 


SUMMARY. 


And hence the phrase common to them all: “The 
Divine Darkness.” Is there any way in which this 
darkness may be made light for the disciple of Kant? 


philosopher has answered that question in The 
Critique of Practical Reason, a work which he tells us 
is the necessary complement of the first: another 
storey of the same edifice. He knew well that 
there is far more in the human consciousness than 
is explicable by “the pure forms of intuition,” 
the concepts of the understanding, the ideas of 
reason; and that to shut us off from the intelligible 
world, is to doom us to moral and spiritual death. 
The opening into this transcendent region he finds 
in the concept of Duty; a concept marked off from 
the notions of space, of time, of substance, and the 
like, by vast differences which prove its objective 
character. Here is for him the creative principle 
of morality, of religion. ‘ We recognize,” he says, 
“in our moral being, the presence of a power that 
is supernatural.” It is the Kantian equivalent of 
the Illuminative Way of theology : and here Kant is 
at one with the mystics of every age in pointing to 
the Inner Light guiding from the phenomenal to the 
noumenal world ° : : . ° 


intuition of duty is, however, but one of many 
faculties independent of sense perception which, as 
a matter of fact, exist in human nature. That power 
within u& which discerns the axioms of eternal 
righteousness is the very same, in root and substance, 
which grasps the facts and interprets the laws of a 
world beyond appearances. : ° ° 


It remains to consider two objections. The first is that 


“whether in the Vedas, the Platonists or the Hege- 


277 


280 


xlvili SUMMARY, 


PAGE 
lians, mysticism is nothing more nor less than 
ascribing objective existence to the subjective crea- 
tion of our own faculties, to mere ideas of the 
intellect” , : : ‘ : 5 284 


Surely this is a tyrannous ipse diwit, if ever utterance 
deserved to be so called. Why should we believe, 
upon the authority of those who confessedly do not 
speak as experts, that the choice specimens of human 
wisdom and virtue in all ages have been wrong, when 
they thought themselves in communion with a 
world transcending sense? It is impossible for 
one who has held high converse with the sages of 
the Upanishads, with Plotinus, with Jelal, with St. 
Teresa, to believe that what those great souls 
accounted the prime and only Reality was wholly 
unreal . : 4 : : : . 284 


The second objection is based upon the discrepancies and 
contradictions of mysticism . : : +260 


This objection seems to fade away, when it is fairly con- 
sidered. The primary position of the mystics is that 
highest truth is not so much intellectually known as 
spiritually felt : ‘‘ cognoscendo ignoratur et ignorando 


3) 


cognoscitur.” The accounts of the mystics are neces- 
sarily discrepant, and the discrepancy is due to the 
varying symbolisms used by them: symbolisms, for 
the most part traditional, inherited from the nation 
or school to which they belong. The Divine Secret 
cannot be congruously conveyed in the language of 
sense perception: ‘“transumanar significar per verba 
von si *poria.” The very incongruity of human 
words as a vehicle of transcendental truth, accounts 
sufficiently for defects in its presentation  . 2c 


SUMMARY. xlix 


No doubt, in the more vulgar manifestations of religion, 
that is to say, the religion of the great majority, the 
mystical element, which is its life, will assume the 
most unlovely forms. But it is still there, potent in 
its divine virtue to slake the thirst of human nature 
for a great good transcending sense . ; —- 285 


CHAPTER VII. 
THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. 


Shall we say, then, that the solution of The Great 
Enigma is given by what is called Theism of the 
natural order—a Theism at once rational and 
mystical? Or is there, among the world’s religions, 
any to which, without making our reason blind, or 
our conscience dumb, we may join ourselves, as 
filling up the revelations of the external and internal 
universe ? : ‘ é d : - 290 


It is held by many excellent and distinguished persons 
that this last question must receive a negative 
answer. ‘They make of religion merely an emotion, 
an aspiration, and of religions merely temporary and 
fluxional hypotheses which have served to render 
the ideal accessible to the multitude. They preach 
an abstract, a subjective and unhistorical religiosity, 
which makes God into an impersonal force, with no 
objective character at all, or, at all events, undis- 
tinguishable from human impulses. ; - 290 


But man never is abstract self-consciousness: he belongs 
to the world of time; he is individual, concrete, hic 


1 SUMMARY, 


PAGE 
et nunc. And the religious faith which binds him 


to a present Deity must have the same character. 
Faith, if it is to be anything more than a blind 
instinct, must involve assent to propositions. And 
that it should likewise involve assent to historical 
truths, is simply of a piece with the laws by which 
man lives, and moves, and has his being : 5 LEE: 


It is precisely because this is the nature of man, and 
of the religious instinct in man, that we are led to 
form ecclesiastical associations ; : . 294 


To speak of Christianity alone, it will be found im- 
possible, in fact, to separate the idea of Christ from 
the person of Jesus, and to live by the one without 
believing in the other. It is to the combination of 
eternal truth with the details of the evangelical 
history, that we must ascribe the influence of Chris- 
tianity over the hearts and lives of men : soe 


And it is enough, for our present practical purpose, to 
confine ourselves to Christianity. Few people, pro- 
bably, would seriously maintain that any other of 
the world’s creeds can really dispute with it the 
world’s future : es : 5 gO 


But what do we mean by Christianity? There are so 
many kinds of Christians! Perhaps we may say 
that Christianity is, in its simplest reduction, the 
doctrine concerning God summed up in the baptismal 
formula—the most ancient and, in a sense, the most 
authoritative, of all its formulas—the acceptance of 
which has, from the first, been required as a condi- 
tion of admission into the Christian society. And 
the question to be discussed in this chapter is 


Wp ds 


SUMMARY. li 


PAGE 
whether there is anything irrational, and therefore 
immoral, in accepting The Christian Synthesis as 
affording the best answer to The Great Enigma « 297 


First, then, as to belief in an Almighty Father, of whom, 
and through whom, and to whom, are all things, 
it may suffice to refer to what has been said in 
previous chapters of this volume. If the intellect 
is valid, the true conclusion can never be Atheism or 
Agnosticism, but must be Theism of some kind . 298 


The conclusions of Reason are certain. But they leave 
us cold. Objective Reason, Eternal Energy, Supreme 
Cause, Absolute Being, Perfect Personality — these 
conceptions, august as they are, by no means suffice 
for the needs, either of our intellect or of our 
emotions. We want “a God that can interest us.” 
Our conceptions of Him are, and cannot keep from 
being, anthropomorphic: that is to say, they are 
conditioned by the essential limits of our nature. It 
may, in a sense, be said, that we incarnate God by 
a necessity of our intellectual and spiritual existence. 
“Humanity will have a God at once finite and 
infinite, real and ideal. It loves the ideal, but it 
will have that ideal personified. It will have a 
God-man”’ : ‘ : : : . 299 


The claim of Christianity is definitively to satisfy 
this longing. It presents Christ to the world as 
“the image of the invisible God,’ in whom the 
eternally ideal has become the historically real: the 
Aédyos Ocios, the thought of the Infinite and Eternal, 
made flesh and dwelling among us: the realization 
of the Divine will in the moral and religious order : 
‘‘the desire of all nations” . ‘ : . 300 


hii 


SUMMARY. 


And this claim is as prevailing now as it was eighteen 


But 


hundred years ago; In the Divine Founder of Chris- 
tianity we have an “ideal of humanity valid for all 
men, at all times, and throughout all worlds” 


external nature and human history are not our only 
sources of knowledge. One of the primary facts of 
consciousness is the feeling of ethical obligation. As 
surely as consciousness reveals to me, in the ordinary 
exercise of my faculties, myself, and an objective 
world not myself, so surely does it reveal to me, 
through that feeling of ethical obligation, a Higher 
than I, to whom that obligation binds me 


‘The moral law first reaches its integral meaning when 


seen as impersonated in a Perfect mind, which com- 
municates it to us, and lends it power over our 
affections, sufficient to draw us into Divine com- 
munion,” The direct revelation of the personal God 
is that which is made to the personality of man. 
“Spiritus Domini replevit orbem.” The article of 
the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Ghost,” 
stands as firmly now as it did eighteen hundred 
years ago. How can it pass away? We have “the 
witness in ourselves ” 


It must not be supposed that an endeavour is being made 


to prove the Christian doctrine of the Trinity by 
appealing to the facts of physical nature, history, 
and consciousness. It is merely contended, for the 
purposes of this argumentum ad hominem, that there 
is nothing in those facts inconsistent with the 
theistic conception of Christianity, but that, on the 
contrary, they clearly harmonize with it 


PAGE 


304 


305 


307 


309 


SUMMARY, 


It will, however, be said that Christianity, as it comes 
before us, means a great deal more than this: that it 
is not merely a religion, but has become a theology : 
that the difficulty really lies in the vast accretion 
of dogma, to excise which from Christianity would 
be to perform a mortal operation upon it 


No doubt that is so. Christianity comes before us “rich 
with the spoils of time.” We may take it or leave 
it. But if we cannot take it as it is, with its 
doctrines and its traditions, we had better leave it. 
It is hard to imagine anything less satisfactory than 
the results attained by the method called rationalistic, 
which, in fact, seems extremely irrational 


No intelligent man can candidly deny that we may 
sometimes find difficulties in reconciling the posi- 
tions of dogmatic theology with the exigencies of 
criticism. But those difficulties are such as we may 
rightly discount when we are unable fully to solve 
them 


It must be remembered that, philosophically considered, 
a dogma is the result of several factors. There is 
the original idea, there is the concrete image, and 
there is the logical deduction. The facts of the 
Divine Life, with their redemptive and recreative 
energy, are not the subject of evolution, The Con- 
fessions, in which we sum up our appreciation and 
interpretation of those facts, are slowly elaborated 
by the human intellect 


Doctrine is the vertebration of religion, and is as essential 
to it as words are to thought. There is something 
in us which compels us to reduce to system the 
various aspects of truth. But our synthesis must 
necessarily be imperfect. ‘Verba sequuntur non 


lit 


PAGE 


309 


310 


310 


dll 


liv SUMMARY. 


PAGE 
modum essendi qui est in rebus, sed modum essendi 
secundum quod in nostra cogitatione sunt.” ‘T'o 
which we must add that human language has an 
essentially physical, sensual, materialistic character. 
And our theological theories expressed in words are , 
but imitations of the inimitable. Christian teaching 
is professedly symbolical. And the symbolized is 
greater, and deeper, and older than the symbol penis 


In the moral order truth is apprehended not only by the 
intelligence, but by the whole soul. The credentials 
of Christianity are sufficient for “men of good will.” 
But they ‘‘are not of so imperative a character as 
to impose themselves on reluctant wills. They are, 
in fact, moral and not mathematical or experimental” 314 


It must be further remembered that “ quidquid recipitur 


secundum modum recipientis recipitur.” Chris- 
tianity is one thing. Popular conceptions of it are 
another : : : ; . 316 


The contention in this chapter is that, while no one 
pretends that Christianity offers us a complete expla- 
nation of the scheme of things, there is no more 
reason in the nineteenth century than there was 
in the first, why its message should not be received 
by cultivated and intelligent men, who feel their 
need of it, and who will carefully and candidly 
examine its claims for themselves. We may call 
Christianity, if we will, “a chapel in the infinite.” 
Still it is a sacred shrine where life and death are 
transfigured for us, where we may gaze into the 
eternal realms of Spirit and Deity, where wise and 
learned, foolish and ignorant, alike, may handle 
everlasting realities, and realize in their deepest 
experience, the powers of the world to come Me oessili) 


THE GRHAT ENIGMA. 


Cree iiiie i 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. 


JouBERT, in one of the neatest of his Aphorisms, 
thus sums up philosophy: ‘Je, d’ou, ov, pour, 
comment, c’est toute la philosophie: l’existence, 
Porigine, le lieu, la fin et les moyens.’’ In truth 
this is The Great Enigma with which the gene- 
rations of mortal men have ever been confronted 
—What am I? Whence am I? Why am I? 
What is my final end? What the means to it? 
There is something in human nature which forces 
man to ask these questions. Hence he has well 
been termed ‘‘a metaphysical animal.’’ That 
it is which clearly marks him off from the 
rest of sentient existence. Schopenhauer has 
strikingly expressed this truth in words from 
which I shall borrow, as I cannot hope to better 


chon .— 
B 


2 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [Cl 


‘With the exception of man, no being wonders at its own 
existence.” ‘‘ Only to the brute, which is without thought, do 
the world and life appear as a matter of course. To man, on the 
contrary, it is a problem whereunto even the coarsest and most 
narrow-minded becomes vividly alive insome brighter moments. 
It enters distinctly and permanently into the consciousness of 
each of us, in proportion as that consciousness is clear and 
considerate, and has, through culture, acquired food for 
thought. In those higher minds which are naturally fitted for 
philosophical investigation, it becomes the ‘ wise wonder’ of 
which Plato spoke.” ‘“Forthe great majority, who cannot apply 
themselves to thought, religion very well supplies the place of 
metaphysics.” “If anything in the world is worth wishing for— 
so well worth wishing for that even the coarse and stupid herd, 
in their more reflective moments, would prize it beyond gold and 
silver—it is that a ray of light should fall on the obscurity of 
our being, and that we should gain some explanation of the 
riddle of existence.” ‘Temples and churches, pagodas and 
mosques, in all lands, at all times, bear testimony by their 
splendour and vastness to this metaphysical need of man.” * 


Tt is no doubt true, as Schopenhauer here in- 
timates, that religions are the philosophies of the 
vulgar. It is also true that philosophy, in that 
highest sense rightly put upon it by the thinkers 
of the antique world, includes all wisdom: by 
wisdom being understood, according to the defini- 
tion of Cicero in the De Officis, ‘the knowledge 
of things divine and human, and of the causes by 
which they are determined.’ Causation is the 
great problem both of philosophy and of religion, 
but they approach it from different sides. Philo- 
sophy endeavours to explain man. Religion pro- 


* Die Welt als Wille wnd Vorstellung. Ergainzungen zum 
ersten Buch. Kap. 17. 


I. | PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 3 


poses to reveal God. It is, however, in the Divine, 
that philosophy seeks the ultimate source and 
fount of the human. It is to man, ‘‘the true 
Shekinah,” as St. Chrysostom writes, made in the 
Divine image and likeness, that religion turns for 
an adumbration of the attributes of the First 
Cause. In both provinces the logical method must 
be followed; no other will serve in controversy. 
Itis a postulate of Christian apologists, from Justin 
Martyr down to Cardinal Newman, that between 
the teachings of religion, rightly understood, and 
the conclusions of philosophy, properly appre- 
hended, there can be no contradiction. <A bold 
and original French writer has spoken of “leg 
grandes verités qui composent la partie supérieure 
et vraiment métaphysique du Christianisme.”’ 
And the world’s greatest intellects, from Plato to 
Hegel, have held, with one consent, that those 
supreme verities are bound together in links of 
necessary thought, which are the common ground 
and the last explanation both of philosophy and 
religion, and which make a philosophy of religion 
possible. For there is only one Truth, and there 
is only one way of discerning what is true. 
“That intellectual light,’ writes St. Thomas 
Aquinas, ‘“‘that is within us, is nought else than 
a certain participated likeness of the Uncreated 
Light, in which are contained the eternal 
reasons.”’ * 


* Summa, I. le, q. 84, a. 5. 


4. THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [cu. 


It is in religions, then, and in the religion which 
is behind all religions, however puerile or debased 
their theologies, however sanguinary or obscene 
their ritual, that mankind, speaking generally, has 
hitherto sought the solution of The Great Enigma. 
They have explained the human by the super- 
human. They have contained—even the poorest 
and lowest of them—an ethical element in virtue 
of which this life was viewed, more or less clearly, 
as a period of probation. But in Christianity this 
ethical element assumes a very different character 
from what it possesses in any other mode of faith. 
Christianity proclaims that man is made and 
fashioned by the hands of the Divine Creator ; 
that he is capable of the perfect felicity of the 
Beatific Vision which is his true end, and that 
the way to that end is by a right ordering of his 
will in this state of moral discipline. This is the 
solution of The Great Enigma taught, in the 
‘Catechism, to every Catholic child: ‘“‘Why did 
‘God make you?—To know Him, love Him, and 
serve Him in this world, and to be happy for ever 
with Him in the next.” Such a view of life and 
the end of life was assuredly new to the masses of 
that vast Roman empire who first had the gospel 
preached to them, however nearly the nobler 
schools of philosophy may have approached to it. 
Mr. Lecky is well warranted when he writes, ‘‘‘T’o 
amalgamate the two spheres of ethics and worship, 
. . . to incorporate moral culture with religion, 


I, | NEW LIGHT ON OLD PROBLEMS. 5 


was among the most important achievements of 
Christianity :’’ an achievement whose practical 
issue is, that “doctrines concerning the nature of 
God, the immortality of the soul, and the duties 
of man, which the noblest intellects of antiquity | 
could barely grasp, have become the truisms of | 
the village school, the proverbs of the cottage and 
of the alley.” * | 


We live, however, in an age when religions— 
Christianity among them—are widely supposed, 
in Mr. Leslie Stephen’s phrase, to have been 
“found out.” From the very first mankind has 
desired an explanation of them. ‘ Whence the 
gods severally sprang ? whether they had existed 
from all eternity? what form they bore ?’’ were 
questions, Herodotus relates, to which he sought 
answers when he visited Dodona. ‘The priestesses 
at that hallowed shrine appear to have been able 
to give him little information beyond the assurance, 
whatever it may have been worth, that the names 
of the Hellenic deities came from Egypt. The 
problems which thus occupied the inquiring mind 
of the father of history have been discussed, with 
little definite result, from his day to ours. But at 
last, we are told by a school of writers whose wide 
learning and indefatigable industry are beyond 


* History of European Morals, ch. iv. 


6 THE TWILIGHT.OF THE GODS. [CH. 


dispute, at last the solution has been found. 
Religions are now studied in the scientific spirit, 
and the mystery which once enshrouded them is 
dispelled. ‘They are the accidents of periods: the 
poems in which man, at sundry times and in 
divers manners, has enshrined his ideals of the 
Divine, his aspirations towards the Unseen. Pro- 
fessors of the science of religion confidently under- 
take to explain these ‘‘ phenomena,” and to deduce 
the laws regulating their manifestation and develop- 
ment. They inform us that the great Olympic 
gods, like the Di Consentes whose gilded statues 
adorned the Forum, were personifications of the 
powers of Nature, while the domestic deities, the 
matpwo. Oeot, the Geot avvayor of the Greeks, 
the Lares and Penates of the Romans, were merely 
deified ancestors. The innumerable denizens of 
the Hindu Pantheon are similarly explained. The 
Allah of Islam is the Sheikh of the spirits 
worshipped by the Arabs, but invested with 
attributes borrowed by Mohammed from the Jews. 
Thus does the new science deal with the theistic 
conceptions of one religion after another, nor does 
it stop short at the Christian Trinity. The Third 
hypostasis of the Sacred Triad, it will have to be 
merely the personification of a metaphor. The 
Second it accounts of as the deification, under 
Platonic influences, of the Son of Mary. The 
First is subjected to a long and painful process of 
criticism which strips off the ecumenical attributes 


en 


Il THE CHRISTIAN DEITY. r 


wherewith He had been invested by Jeremiah, the 
Babylonian Isaiah, and the later prophets, and 
reveals Him as the national God of a small tribe 
of Western Semites. Even His name is not left 
Him. The worshippers who bow “‘ before Jehovah's 
awful throne ”’ are told that the consecrated appella- 
tion is a barbarous forgery composed of the con- 
sonants of one word and of the vowels of another. 
They are bidden to say Yahveh: and Yahveh, they 
are assured, was originally merely the Sky God, 
and then the God of the Sky, a primitive concep- 
tion of a primitive people. ‘Praise Him in His 
name Jah,” sang the Hebrew bard. But this is 
pronounced to be a borrowed designation. Jao, 
or Jah, according to some great authorities, who 
found themselves upon the cuneiform inscriptions, 
is, in truth, the fire-god of the Chaldees, adopted 
at one time by the Israelites and invoked as 
Hallelu-Jah. Curious starting-point for the 
Paschal Alleluia, the Hallelujah Chorus, and the 
Hallelujah Sals and Bills who make day hideous 
beneath the standard of ‘‘ General’ Booth. 

Such is the account of the God of Christianity 
often presented to us in the name of the science 
of religion. And then its professors apply them- 
selves to the revered documents which are, in a 
sense, the credentials of that faith, and invite us 
to consider candidly what they are really worth. 
‘“Ye have Moses and the Prophets,” 1t was said of 
old. What is left of Moses and the Prophets by 


8 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [cH. 


the criticism usually called ‘higher’? The 
Pentateuch it pronounces to be really the Hexa- 
teuch shorn of its tail, the Book of Joshua, an 
operation performed when the legendary name of 
Moses was given to the collection, because it 
would have been too much to expect even Apella 
the Jew to believe that the law-giver wrote not 
only the account of his own death and burial, but 
also the history of his successor’s conquests. Does 
any good easy-going Christian exclaim, ‘ Well, 
Hexateuch if you will; what does it matter?” 
Nay, but the Hexateuch itself is exhibited as 
mainly based upon the fusion of two narratives— 
which indeed extend beyond it—the Jehovistic 
and the Hlohistic: collections of the primitive 
cosmogonies brought by the Hebrews with them 
from Mesopotamia, ‘‘the most ancient portion of 
their traditional baggage,” of ethnographic myths, 
of ritual prescriptions, of moral precepts, of popular 
ballads celebrating the exploits of national heroes. 
The fusion is referred to the reign of Hezekiah— 
B.C, 725-696—a time of great literary activity, 
which displayed itself chiefly in compilation. The 
real beginning of the Old Testament, we are told, 
was a long-perished Book of Legends of the 
Israelites, the choicest treasure of this singular 
people; the source to which we owe the charming 
romance of Joseph, the touching history of Ishmael, 
the incomparable tale of Jacob, ‘at once so 
sublime and so gross, so concrete and so ideal,” 


I. | THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES. 9 


and those many other exquisite and perfect stories, 
breathing all the freshness of the world’s spring- 
time, ‘‘which have made the literary fortune of 
the Bible.” I do not discuss these views. I 
simply expound them. They may, at least, serve 
to illustrate the remark of a recent writer, “On 
ne fait pas d’exégése impunément.” Of Moses, 
then, the ‘‘ higher”’ criticism makes a mere mosaic. 
Lhe Prophets fare as badly at its hands. It some- 
times dissolves the most venerated personalities, 
as when it insists upon two Isaiahs. It radically 
reforms chronology. It rejects, as spurious, 
writings bearing the most hallowed names. It 
finds that the vaticinations most confidently relied 
upon by Christian apologists had really reference 
to secular and contemporary affairs, and will no 
more see in such a text as ‘‘Out of Egypt have 
I called my Son” a reference to the Messiah, than 
it will see in the verse of Scott, ‘‘ The sun shines 
fair on Carlisle walls,’’ a reference to the sage who 
dwelt in Cheyne Row. Nor does the New Testa- 
ment come off much better than the Old. Not to 
speak of revolutionary views as to the date and 
origin of its several books, the supernatural element 
is eliminated from it. Miracles are pronounced 
to be the residuum of religions, although it is 
admitted that at the epoch when Christianity 
arose they passed for the indispensable mark of 
the Divine, and for the sign of the prophetic 
calling. The old hypothesis of fraud is now little 


10 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. (CH. 


employed for their explanation. But it is declared 
that the apostles and evangelists lived in a state 
of poetic ignorance, at least as complete as that 
of St. Clare and the Three Companions, and so 
found it quite natural that their Master should 
have interviews with the imaginary personages 
Moses and Elias, should command the elements 
and raise the dead. ‘The divine radiance dies 
away from the Crucified, to whom the hearts of 
eighteen centuries have gone out with adoring 
love. ‘All very well,” says the vivisecting 
surgeon in Lord Tennyson's most pathetic poem 
—‘ All very well, but the good Lord Jesus has 
had His day.”’ 

After this manner does modern criticism ex- 
plain the Christian Deity and His religion. And, 
as if that were not enough, the stupendous con- 
quests achieved by physical science in this new 
age have introduced us to quite other conceptions, 
both of man and of his place in the universe, than 
those more or less closely interwoven with the old 
theological dogmas. Cosmogony, geology, pale- 
ontology, and physiology have simply revolu- 
tionized our thoughts about the world in which 
we live. As we all know, it is a favourite doctrine 
with many physicists of authority that ‘‘in fluid 
heat this earth began,” and that after its detach- 
ment from the solar nebula, an unimaginable 
period of time passed away—three or four hundred 
millions of years they tell us—before it condensed 


——— 


I, | THE NEW BOOK OF GENESIS. 11 


into globular form, cooled, solidified, and became 
habitable. Then, as the new Book of Genesis 
teaches, for ten or twelve millions of years it was 
the seat of primitive organisms, of inferior species, 
algee and the lower invertebrata. Another ten — 
millions of years are calculated to have elapsed 
from the appearance of animal life, and of the 
higher vegetable forms, to the advent of man. It 
was some thousand centuries ago, as would appear, 
since this most highly specialized of mammals 
found himself upon the earth. And what a pic- 
ture rises before us of those strange and monstrous 
forms of sentient existence, which were the pre- 
decessors and the necessary precursors of humanity! 
The trumpet of science has sounded through their 
sepulchres in all lands, and they have risen at its 
compelling summons, to give account of them- 
selves to Man. From their graves beneath the 
rivers, or under the mountains, or deep down in 
the recesses of mines, they have come together, 
bone to his bone. And the naturalist prophesies, 
and lo! the sinews and the flesh come upon them, 
and the skin covers them above, and they stand 
in our galleries and museums an exceeding great 
army. ‘Those huge dinosauri, those grotesque 
pterodactyls, those formidable megalosauri—the 
originals of the griffins, the vampires, the dragons 
of fable—were once the lords of the earth; and 
they are our ancestors: the far-off fathers of the 
savants who have raised them up from their long 


12 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [ CH. 


sleep. Certain it is, science declares to us, as she 
surveys the past, that from the simplest forms of 
animate existence, from plants leafless, flowerless, 
fruitless, from animals headless, sexless, motion- 
less, the ascent of life runs unbroken, through 
innumerable minutest gradations, on manifold lines, 
until it reaches its utmost differentiation, its com- 
pletest personality, in man. As certain is it, she 
prophesies, as she sets her face towards the future, 
that man as he now exists, is not the supreme 
product of evolution, the ultimate result of the 
law of progress: that the inexhaustible fecundity 
of the Mighty Mother has in store nobler types: 
that it was no idle fancy, but a true forecast, 
which inspired the vision of the crowning race, no 
longer half-akin to brute :— 
‘Of those, that eye to eye shall look 
On knowledge: under whose command 


Is Earth and Harth’s: and in their hand 
Is Nature, like an open book.” 


This is the answer which the revelation of 
science makes to the question, What is man? 
And yet, not the whole answer. She bids us hft 
our eyes to the heavens, and read what 1s written 
there regarding tho human race and the globe ib 
doth inhabit. Of those celestial bodies which 
gravitate, in majestic harmony, through infinite 
space, some are suns first bursting into flame, 
others are suns well-nigh burnt out. Here are 
worlds which are the cradles of life. There are 


—~ 


1. | A RIPPLE ON, THE SEA OF LIFE.” 13 


worlds which are its tombs; vast nameless sepul- 
chres, black and frozen, minatory of the end to 
which our terrestrial home is surely hastening. 
‘This earth is but a diminutive islet in the bound-_ 
less celestial archipelago, which has its centre 
everywhere and its circumference nowhere: one 
of the least considerable planets of our vast solar 
system, which again is a mere speck in the illi- 
mitable ocean of space. Who can believe that all 
the boundless universe, except this infinitesimal 
constituent of it upon which we live, is merely 
monotonous mechanism? that the millions of 
world-systems, lit by suns before whose splendour 
ours pales its ineffectual fires, are unpeopled soli- 
tudes, desert and sterile from everlasting to ever- 
lasting? Reason revolts at such a conclusion. 
It demands a reasonable purpose in the universe. 
We argue, and justly, concerning other world- 
systems from the analogy of our own. It has 
been said, and perhaps not too strongly, that the 
existence of ultra-terrestrial life is the capital 
synthesis and the definite conclusion of all 
astronomy. ‘The wave of life which is now 
passing over our earth is but a ripple on the sea 
of life within the solar system; and that sea of 
life is but as a wavelet on the great ocean of life 
that is co-extensive with the universe.” Not 
eternal death, but life eternal, wraps us round. 
And what can we conceive concerning the 
denizens of those other worlds? Hven upon the 


14 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [ CH. 


earth the reign of man is but a short episode in 
its history. ‘The races now peopling this globe 
are quite different from those found in it under 
other conditions. Certain it is that in the infinite 
diversities of environment in other worlds, organ- 
isms quite unlike our own must be evolved. Nor, 
from our inchoate civilization, the product of a 
few thousands of years, can we even conjecture 
of the progress achieved in longer periods, by 
beings endowed with faculties, unlike and, no 
doubt, often transcending ours. All this, we are 
told, is incontestable by the wise. And we are 
asked, How can we reconcile it with that theory 
of final causes, which accounts of this inconsider- 
able speck in the infinite universe as the end of 
the wondrous All? How do the old religions of 
mankind, with their infantine cosmogonies, their 
mythical anthropologies—mere dreams which have 
visited the cradles of races—look in the light now 
shed from those ‘‘ innumerable, pitiless, passionless 
eyes’? in the heavens, which ‘‘burn and brand 
his nothingness into man’’? Professor Huxley 
has not adoubt about the answer. ‘‘ Astronomy,” 
he assures us, ‘‘more than any other science, has 
rendered it impossible for men to accept the 
beliefs of their forefathers.’’ What is man, do 
we demand? Why, man, they tell us, the whole 
race as the individual, is but an ephemeral atom 
in the universe, where all is movement, all is trans- 
formation. Yes, all. The physical formation of 


————————————“——< ss OC 


1. | THE COURSE OF EUROPEAN THOUGHT. 15 


the earth, as of the infinite series of worlds, the 
conditions of life, the organisms which environ- 
ment insensibly, but completely, modifies, habits, 
language, laws, all are in perpetual metamor- 
phosis: and so are religions too. Are the genera- 
tions of men like the generations of leaves? Even 
so are the generations of gods. Even so. And 
M. Renan takes up his parable and declares that 
this is well. ‘All here below is symbol and 
dream. Gods pass away like men; and it would 
be ill for us if they were eternal. The faith which 
we have once had should never be a chain. We 
have paid our debt to it when we have reverently 
wrapped it round in the shroud of purple where 
the dead gods sleep.” 

I do not think that any one who carefully follows 
the course of European thought from the days of 
Kant and Goethe (I might say from the days of 
Galileo and Spinoza) can doubt that it has conducted 
multitudes to the conclusions which I have depicted 
in rough, but, as I trust, clear outline. I am not, 
at present, inquiring how far they are warranted. 
I am merely pointing to the undeniable fact that 
they are very widely diffused. They are, so to 
speak, in the air. People can no more escape 
from them than from cholera or influenza: nay, 
less; for thought is the most contagious thing in 
the world. They darken the dim minds, and 
thwart the dull lives of millions who could give 
no coherent account of them. Current literature 


16 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [cH. 


everywhere exhibits evidence of their activity. 
Nor is the general doubt merely about this or 
that dogma. Unquestionable is it, that as the 
old creeds have lost their hold upon men’s minds, 
the Theistic conception which they, more or less 
worthily enshrined, has become faint. The public 
mind is confused with the speculations upon this 
high theme which so many learned men, and so 
many men who are not learned, place before us. 
God, one writer avers, did not create man, it is 
man who creates Him; He does not think, but is 
thought; He is the category of the ideal, the 
symbol of the truth which we conceive, the beauty 
which we imagine, the good which we long for. 
Another, while bidding us purge our minds of the 
phantom of personality, the ghost of individuality, 
makes of man ‘“‘a wandering sorrow in a world of 
dreams,” and of God one of those dreams projected 
upon nothingness. There are those who bid us be 
of good comfort, because, although God does not 
yet exist, He will exist some day; He is being 
made or is making Himself, they assure us; is, if 
I may so speak, on the road. The author of 
Natural Religion invites us to think of God as 
the “unity which all things comprise, in virtue of 
the universal presence of the same laws;” a 
difficult thing to do, as it seems to me: I wonder 
whether he has ever himself succeeded in doing it. 
Then there is the ultra-Hegelian school, which 
will have it that God is personal only in man, 


‘a “CLOUDED: WITH -A, DOUBT.” 17 


and that man is personal only in God; a dark 
saying which I do not pretend to understand. 
The practical issue is that, for vast multitudes,— 


“He is now but a cloud and a smoke, who once was a pillar 
of fire ; 
The guess of a worm in the dark, and the shadow of its desire.” 


When Pierre Leroux offered his article “ Dieu” 
to the Revue des Deux Mondes, it was returned 
with the observation, “La question de Dieu 
manque Wactualité.” The voice of the Zeitgeist 
spoke by the mouth of Buloz. 

But it is not only in the domain of religion that 
the general mind is “clouded with a doubt.” 
Victor Hugo truly tells us, “ Tout aujourd’hui, dans 
les idées comme dans les choses, est & Létat de 
crépuscule. Un point d’interrogation se dresse 
a la fin de tout.’”* The scepticism of the age 
extends to all first principles, and is nowhere 
more signally manifested than in the sphere of 
ethics. ‘‘ Bound to believe and to do”’ was the 
conviction which dominated former generations. 
The obligation to right action is as much called in 
question as the obligation to a right creed. Nor 
is this to be wondered at. Christianity has 
hitherto claimed to instruct the nations both in 
faith and morals. And it is natural that the dark- 
ness which has overshadowed its theology should 
fall also upon its ethics. Professor Seeley has 


* Preface to Les Chants de Orépuscule. 


18 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. (CH. 


recorded his opinion that ‘never was the English 
mind so confused, so wanting in fixed moral 
principles, as at present.”* Doubt concerning 
Deity has generated doubt concerning duty. 

From one point of view, indeed, it is extremely 
illogical that the decay of religious belief should 
affect ethical convictions, for the spheres of 
theology and of moral philosophy are, in them- 
selves, distinct. It may, perhaps, be well here to 
enlarge a little upon this truth, which appears not 
to be apprehended by various influential writers 
who certainly ought not to be ignorant of it. 
Thus, Mr. Herbert Spencer seems to suppose 
that transcendental moralists inculcate ‘“ a code of 
theological ethics,” and think “ Divine commands 
the only possible guides.”+ More crudely still, 
but in the same spirit, Mr. Leslie Stephen describes 
that school as affirming that morality is ‘‘ the 
product of a particular creed:” that it is “ caused 
by belief in Christianity :” that “1b dropped from 
the clouds eighteen hundred years ago.” { This 
representation of the view held by transcendental 


* See his very interesting paper on “ Ethics and Religion ” 
in the Fortnightly Review, of April, 1871, p. 506. 

+ Data of Ethics, pref., p. iv. Elsewhere in this volume he 
writes, ‘‘ Religious creeds, established and dissenting, all em- 
body the belief that right and wrong are right and wrong 
simply in virtue of Divine enactment,” that “ moral truths have 
no other origin than the will of God.” 

+ See his article, “ Belief and Conduct,” Nineteenth Century, 
September, 1888. 


it. ETHICS AND CHRISTIANITY. 19 


moralists is so utterly incorrect that one can hardly 
understand how an intelligent person can in good 
faith have made it. In its really philosophical 
aspect, our morality appeals to metaphysical, not 
to theological principles. The ethical precepts of 
Christianity are independent of its mysteries. As 
a matter of fact, they have been largely derived 
from non-Christian sources. Jesus Christ left no 
code of ethics.* He left the record of a life of 
lives, where the moral ideal is realized: a supreme 
example, an all-sufficient pattern. He preached 
perfection and exhibited Himself as the embodi- 
ment of it. But it is impossible to formulate from 
the Gospels, even if we add to them the Hpistles, 
the elements of a scientific morality. I shall not 
be supposed to undervalue the direct contributions 
made to morals by the New Testament. I think 
it is the fashion, at the present day, largely to 
undervalue them. But the great work of Chris- 
tianity for ethics was to fecundate it by the supreme 
ideal of self-sacrifice presented by Him, who 
“pleased not Himself,” and to elevate it by the 
exhibition of man’s true end and supreme good, 


* So Suarez: “Christus non tradidit Preecepta moralia 
Positiva, sed Naturalia illa magis explicavit.”—De Legibus, lib. 2, 
c. lo,n.9. And in his tenth book (c. 2, n. 20) he quotes the 
dictum of Aquinas: “ Legem novam esse contentam preeceptis 
moralibus Naturalis. Legis, et articulis Fidei et Sacramentis 
Gratiw.” The “Lex Naturalis” is a permanent revelation of 
the Reason, indicating ‘‘ quid sit per se malum vel bonum 
homini.” 


20 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [oH. 


the enjoyment by the soul, purified through the 
truth, of the Absolute Truth in the Beatific 
Vision. And when, in the expanding Christian 
society, the need arose for a scientific synthesis, 
recourse was had to the great philosophers of 
Greece: to Aristotle and Plato: to the Stoics and 
the Epicureans. It is to the inexhaustible fount 
of wisdom opened by Hellenic thought, that we 
owe the clearness, the precision, the wealth ot 
psychological analysis which characterize the 
ethical teaching of the great medieval schoolmen 
and of their modern continuators. For them, the 
moral law depends, not upon the command of a 
supreme legislator, but upon “those dictates of 
natural reason” which, in the words of Suarez, 
‘Care intrinsically necessary and independent of 
all volition, even of the Divine.” * Upon these 
dictates do we ground morality. From the very 
nature of man do we ascertain it. The moral eye 
of the sage (dpovipos), as Aristotle teaches, is an 
original source of knowledge, through its inward 
intuitions. Ethical science proceeds from those 
intuitions as directed upon the manifestations of 
the moral nature. We start from the facts of 
personality, will, consciousness. And we work up 
to principles. The moral law, as we conceive of 
it, is a transcendental, universal order, good in 
itself, as being supremely reasonable ; the rule of 


* De Legibus, c. 6,n.1. I need hardly observe that this is also 
the teaching of Plato. 


I. | THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, 21 


what should be, as distinct from what zs. To that 
rule our own individual reason gives testimony : 
for the moral order of the macrocosm is mirrored 
in the microcosm. ‘This is what St. Paul calls 
our ‘‘consent unto the law that it is good,” 
our ‘delight in it, after the inward man.” We 
have the witness in ourselves to that should be. 
Necessity is laid upon us. The Categorical Im- 
perative ‘“‘ Thou oughtest’’ means ‘‘ As a rational 
agent thou must.’’ The goodness of man consists 
in his voluntary submission to that Imperative : 
in his allowing the higher law by which he feels 
himself involuntarily conditioned, to prevail over 
‘‘the law in his members.”’ ‘The true end of man 
is moral perfection, not pleasure. And it is in 
bringing the animal nature into obedience to the 
rational, the particular will into subjection to the 
universal, that he advances towards that end. 
The moral quality, subjectively considered — of 
course the act has also, or rather primarily, a moral 
quality—tresides, not in the result achieved, nor in 
the end pursued by him, but in the motive which 
prompts him: in the inner spring of action, in 
volition. The only real and absolute good for man 
is a good will: that is a will determined by the 
moral law. ‘The desire to do right, as right, is 
morality. No act is really ethical which is not 
motived by Duty, by obedience to the moral law. 
And that law, as Kant admirably teaches, is not 
a higher self, but an independent reality, which 


22 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. (cH. 


evokes the higher self within us. Human con- 
science is the entering into the individual of the 
objective law of right, the authority of which is 
intrinsic and unconditioned: which is its own 
evidence, its own justification ; and which would 
subsist to all eternity, as it has subsisted from 
all eternity, though Christianity, and all other 
religions, were swept into oblivion. I do not 
deny, but strenuously maintain, that the ideas of. 
God and Immortality are the crown of the moral 
law. ‘True is it, that this law, written on the 
fleshly tables of our heart—‘‘the law of virtue 
which we are born under”—links us with the 
whole moral order of the universe, and with the 
Infinite and Eternal, its final end and ours, in 
whose Divine Reason, as Plato teaches, it is con- 
tained. But it is also true that this law is in itself 
independent of religion: that if we prescind from, 
if we make abstraction of the formal idea of God,— 


‘“‘ Duty exists: immutably survive 
For our support, the measures and the forms, 
Which an abstract intelligence supplies.” 


The very knowledge which we have, by our natural 
reason, of justice and injustice suffices to give rise 
to a strict ethical obligation. ‘ N’y ett-il méme 
point de Dieu saint et bon, n’y éut-1l que le grand 
étre universel, loi de tout idéal, sans hypostase ni 
réalité, le Devoir serait encore le mot de l’énigme 
et l’étoile polaire de Vhumanité en marche.” 


a] THE TWO WORLDS. 23 


Such is the moral law, as we account for it. 
And, being such, it assuredly merits the homage 
which Kant has paid it, in a magnificent passage 
where that most sober of philosophers seems, as 
it were, caught up into the realms of Spirit and 
Deity, and labouring to express in human speech 
those “unspeakable words which it is not lawful 
for men to utter” that fell upon his trembling 
ear. ‘Two things fill the mind with ever new 
and increasing wonder and reverence, the more 
frequently and the more closely reflection occupies 
itself with them, the starry heaven above me, and 
the moral law within me. Neither may I search 
after and merely guess concerning them, as 
though veiled in obscurities, or in the transcen- 
dental, beyond my range of vision. I see them 
before me, and connect them immediately with the 
consciousness of my own existence. The first 
originates from the position which I occupy in the 
outer world of the senses, and augments into 1m- 
measurable greatness the connection (Verkniipfung),. 
wherein I stand, with worlds on worlds and sys- 
tems on systems, in the illimitable ages of their 
periodical movements, their beginning, and their 
duration. The second originates from my invisible 
self, my Personality; and places me in a world 
which has the true unendingness, but is apprehen- 
sible only by the understanding, and with which 
I recognize myself to be connected, not. . . only 
accidentally and through the position which I 


24 THE. TWILIGHT Orc TEE IGODS. [ CH. 


chance to occupy in the world of sense, but uni- 
versally and necessarily.” * Duty, then, for the 
sake of duty, is the true principle. But it is a 
principle ‘‘ too bright and good for human nature’s 
daily food.’ For those who, by defect of will 
and nature, cannot rise to the height of this great 
argument, there is need of retributive happiness and 
suffering, of ‘‘deos aliquos et subterranea regna ”’ + 
to keep them in the right way. Thatarule is con- 
formable with reason is not sufficient to insure 
obedience to it. Nor can we, indeed, think of the 
absolute and unconditioned authority of the moral 
law as proceeding from an abstraction. It implies 
a Person, the object of love, veneration, and fear ; 
it witnesses to One with whom we have to do, 
holy, just, retributive; and—such is our nature 
—it is precisely because it bears this witness that 
it rules our will. “Religion, subjectively con- 
sidered,” is defined by Kant as “the recognition 
of all our duties as Divine commands.” Assuredly 


* Krittk der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss. 

t To obviate any misconception of my meaning, let me here 
cite a few words from Dr. Martineau, with which I substantially 
agree. “If there were no award of retributory happiness and 
suffering, the moral law would be curtailed of its adequate 
Supports: not, however, because right and wrong are revealed, 
or even in themselves distinguished, only by their consequences, 
and by the erasure of these would be equalized, but because 
with our reflective knowledge of the better and the worse are 
connected secret auguries of joy and sorrow, the failure and 
falsehood of which would throw discredit on the whole 
announcement of the inner oracle.”—Types of Hthical Theory, 
vol. i. p. 105, 


I.] THE SPRINGS OF ACTION. 25 


it is this, whatever else it may be. And here is 
the effective sanction of the moral law, by which 
it is made an operative and living reality in the 
lives of men. As the same philosopher writes, 
“Without a God and without a world, not now 
visible to us, but hoped for, the glorious ideas of 
morality are indeed objects of approbation and of 
admiration, but cannot be the springs of purpose 
and practice.” * Hence the ideas of moral good 
and evil, and of rewards and punishments beyond 
the grave, the presentiment of which forms part 
and parcel of human nature, properly find place in 
dogmatic religious teaching, nay, constitute one of 
its principal spheres. Christianity is, and cannot 
keep from being, a vast system of moral discipline. 
For a thousand years it has taught the foremost 
nations of the world what ‘to believe and to do.” 
And, assuredly, its rules of action must share in 
the discredit cast upon its articles of faith. It is im- 
possible practically to viewany ethical problem apart 
from The Great Enigma of the meaning and end of 
life which fundamentally underlies all morality. 


Now, in this book I propose, in the first place, to 
assume, for the purpose of my argument, that the 
solution of that Enigma offered by Theistic belief, 


* Krittk der reinen Vernunft. Methodenlehre, 2 Haupst., 2 
Abschn. 


26 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [ cH. 


and especially by Christianity, 1s discredited, and 
to consider, both in their theoretical and practical 
aspects, the other solutions offered us instead. I 
shall then ask my readers to weigh with me the 
question whether Theism in general, and the 
Christian religion in particular, are, in Heine’s 
phrase, so utterly “played out” as is very gene- 
rally contended. Such is the scope of the present 
book. And here let me observe that I am writing 
it for the benefit, not of those who are already of 
my opinion, but of those who are not. I cannot 
conceal from myself that there is a great and 
srowing multitude of cultivated and virtuous men 
and women, earnestly desirous to follow truth, 
who, in the increased capacities for doubting 
which this new age confers, are unable—honestly 
unable—to use the old religious symbols. Yet 
they feel acutely ‘that unless above himself he ~ 
can erect himself, how poor a thing is man!” 
They suffer from what George Sand called “the 
remorse of religion and the recklessness of think- 
’? Tt is of no avail to say to them, with a 
vigorous disputant of the present day, “A man 
who cannot occupy his mind with love, friendship, 
science, literature, art, politics, trade, and a thou- 
sand other matters, must be a poor kind of 
creature.’ This truculent dictum—happily an 
extra-judicial utterance of the learned judge who 
delivered himself of it—does not in the least touch 
them. They feel that it is as though a deaf man 


ing 


a “A POOR KIND OF CREATURE.” 27 


should revile the portentous folly of all who are 
moved with concord of sweet sounds: as though a 
blind man should proscribe the pictorial art as idle 
daubing. They feel that the exact contrary is 
true; that a man who can wholly occupy his mind 
with such things—even though he put money in 
his purse thereby—must be “a poor kind of 
creature ;’ because precisely in proportion to our 
elevation in the scale of being is our inability to 
appease with finite husks the infinite hunger that 
is in us. To such I especially address myself in 
what Iam about to write. I shall endeavour to 
put myself in their place, to see with their eyes, to 
feel with their sentiments. I say to them, Setting 
aside altogether the stock arguments—if I may so 
speak—usually relied upon by Christian apologists, 
prescinding from the “ evidences’? commonly 
adduced in favour of what is called “revealed ” 
religion—arguments and evidences which you ex 
hypothest find insufficient—let us see, first, what 
is the real value of the answers to The Great 
Hnigma of human life offered us in the place of 
such religion, and, next, whether its essential 
verities do not rest upon a basis of adamant, 
against which the dynamite of modern physicists, 
historians, and critics is powerless. 


There are really, as it seems to me, in good 


28 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [ CH. 


logic, only two answers besides Theism to this 
great problem of man’s existence—Atheism and 
Agnosticism: terms which, before I go further, I 
ought to define. Atheism has been employed in 
many different senses. Thus St. Paul speaks of 
the Polytheistic Greeks as Atheists in the world 
(dOecou €v tw KoOope), and the Hastern Fathers after 
him do the like. Clement of Alexandria, for 
example, describes the Bacchic orgies as ‘the 
mysteries of Atheists.” On the other hand, the 
primitive Christians were reproached with Atheism, 
as Socrates had been reproached before them, and 
some of the early apologists apply themselves to 
a refutation of that charge.* 'The sense in which 
the word is used has gradually been narrowed ; 
and should, as I think, be still further restricted. 
Theologians classify Atheists as practical and 
theoretical, systematic and non-systematic, direct 
and indirect. lLittré defines an Atheist as ‘“‘ one 
who does not believe in God.’ But there are 
many who, like Faust, are unable, for one reason 
or another, to say, ‘‘I believe in God,” and who 
strongly object to inclusion in the same category 


* Athenagoras is one of these. He writes (Legatio 10): “I 
have sufficiently demonstrated that they are not Atheists who 
believe in One who is unbegotten, eternal, unseen, impassible, 
incomprehensible, and uncontained; comprehended by mind 
and reason only, invested with ineffable light and beauty and 
spirit and power; by whom the universe is brought into being 
and set in order and held firm, through the agency of His own 
Logos.” —Quoted by Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, p. 253. 


D| ATHEISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 29 


with those who in terms deny Him. Doubt, sus- 
pension of judgment, ignorance, they maintain, 
represent a very different attitude of mind from 
negation. And it appears to me that they are 
well warranted in their contention. I think they 
are most correctly described by the name of 
‘“Agnostic,” invented by Professor Huxley for 
their benefit; and I shall so describe them. The 
term ‘ Atheist,” I shall restrict to the dogmatic 
denier of God. Of Agnosticism, again, there will 
be found to be two varieties, which, for very prac- 
tical reasons, ought to be distinguished: the 
merely critical and negative, and the scientific or 
affirmative. There are those who maintain that 
we cannot know whether or no a Divine Noumenon 
exists. And there are those who assert His exist- 
ence, but deny that He can be known. 

I shall return to this distinction hereafter. 
My present point is that to Atheism or Agnosti- 
cism all antitheistic theories may be reduced. 
This is clearly true of Pantheism, which is really 
such.* JI add the qualifying words, because what 
is often called Pantheism is merely the presenta- 
tion—the one-sided presentation, it may be—of 
the great Theistic verity, too often ignored, upon 

* Mr. Downes, in his interesting article in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica, defines Pantheism as “‘ that speculative system which, 
by absolutely identifying the subject and the object of thought, 
reduces all existence, mental and material, to phenomenal modi- 


fications of one eternal self-existent Substance, which is called 
by the name of God.” 


30 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [ CH. 


which Plato insisted when he taught the men of 
Athens “all things are full of divinity, full of 
soul; ’? which St. Paul recalled to them when he 
declared on Areopagus, ‘‘In Him we live and 
move and have our being.”  Pantheism, that 
is really such, in all the manifold forms which it 
assumes—for it is a very Proteus—will be found 
rather a term than a terminus of human thought, 
its ultimate resolution being the cancellation of 
the Theistic idea. Such, I maintain, is the logical 
value of the doctrine which sees in the universe 
only the self-evolution of the Infinite, and in man 
only that point in such self-evolution at which the 
Infinite attains self-consciousness. ‘To deity the 
totality of things is to annihilate Deity, for it 
empties the Divine Noumenon ot the elements of 
personality and morality ; while it is no answer 
at all to The Great Enigma wherewith we are con- 
cerned: “to call the world God,” Schopenhauer 
has well observed, ‘‘is not to explain it; it re- 
mains a riddle under the one name as under the 
other.’’* 


* The following terse and cogent remarks, from the Bampton 
Lectures (1866) of my lamented friend Dr. Liddon, may fitly 
find place here: ‘In conceiving of God, the choice before a 
Pantheist lies between alternatives from which no genius has 
as yet devised a real escape. God, the Pantheist must assert, 
is literally everything ; God is the whole material and spiritual 
universe; He is humanity in all its manifestations; He is by 
inclusion every moral and immoral agent ; and every form and 
exaggeration of moral evil, no less than every variety of moral 
excellence and beauty, is part of the all-pervading, all-compre- 


| ANTITHEISTIC THEORIES. 31 


The principal other antitheistic theories before 
the world are Materialism, Positivism, Secularism, 
and Pessimism. Concerning these it will be suffi- 
cient here to remark that Materialism,* like 
Pantheism, is a name covering a vast variety of 
opinions, all of which will be found to issue in the 
denial of Deity in the universe, or in the denial 
that anything transcending the senses can be appre- 
hended by man. Positivism, whether in its more 
materialistic form, originally taught by Comte, or 
as modified in an idealistic sense by later expo- 
nents, should, I suppose, since it repudiates abso- 
lute Atheism in terms, be held to be a variety of 
Agnosticism. The same, it would seem, must, in 


hending movement of His universal life. If this revolting 
blasphemy be declined, then the God of Pantheism must be the 
barest abstraction of abstract being; He must, as with the 
Alexandrian thinkers, be so exaggerated an abstraction as to 
transcend existence itself; He must be conceived of as utterly 
unreal, lifeless, non-existent; while the only real beings are 
those finite and determinate forms of existence whereof 
‘nature’ is composed. This dilemma haunts all the historical 
transformations of Pantheism, in Europe as in the East, to-day 
as two thousand years ago. Pantheism must either assert that 
its God is the one only existing being whose existence absorbs 
and is identified with the universe and humanity; or else it 
must admit that He is the rarest and most unreal of conceivable 
abstractions; in plain terms, that He is no being at all” (p. 
393). 

* In its proper sense Materialism means absolute Atheism; 
for it is the doctrine that in matter is the foundation and 
explanation of the universe, and that life is merely a form of 
mechanical and chemical force. It denies the existence of God 
and of the soul. 


32 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [cH 


fairness, be said of Secularism,* although Mr. 
Bradlaugh laboured abundantly to show that its 
principles are essentially atheistic. Finally, Pessi- 
mism, in what are called the ‘‘reasoned’’ forms 
of its contemporary presentation, is irreconcilable 
with any form of the Theistic idea. It denies ‘all 
that is called God or that is worshipped,’ and 
exhibits as the answer to The Great Enigma a blind 
irrational entity, denominated by Schopenhauer, 
Will; and by Hartmann, The Unconscious. Iam 
very far indeed from saying that this judgment 
holds good of all Pessimism. On the contrary, 
Buddhism, which certainly exhibits a pessimistic 
view of the world, recognized the innumerable 
divinities of the Hindoo Pantheon. That is clear 
from its canonical books. Equally clear is it that 
the Buddhist missionaries adopted, or, at the least, 
respected the gods honoured in the countries 
which they evangelized. It is perfectly true that 
Buddhism does not possess the conception of the 
supreme creative Deity of Monotheism. But its 


* “The Secularist is an exponent of that philosophy of life 
termed Secularism, which deprecates the old policy of sacrificing 
the certain welfare of humanity on earth to the merely possible 
and altogether unknown requirements of a life beyond the 
grave; which concentrates human attention on the life which 
now is instead of upon a dubious life to come; which declares 
science to be the only available Providence of man, which 
repudiates groundless faith and accepts the sole guide of reason ; 
and makes conduciveness to human welfare the criterion of 
right and wrong.’”—Prospectus of The Secularist, quoted in 
Mr. Gladstone’s Gleanings, vol. 11. p. 129. 


1. PESSIMISM. 33 


very foundation is belief in a supersensuous Power 
tuling absolutely over gods and men and all sen- 
tient existence; and that Power a pertectly just 
and holy Law. And this is the source of its 
sublime morality. Christianity, again, has almost 
as much in common with Buddhist pessimism ag 
with Buddhist ethics. It is essentially a doctrine 
of renunciation based upon the verity succinctly 
formulated by the apostle—“ Mundus totus in 
maligno positus est; ‘The whole world lieth in 
wickedness:”’ a verity true not of an age but for all 
time. It is a doctrine of abstinence, not only from 
all things which it brands as positively sinful, but 
from pleasant things in themselves licit. It is a 
doctrine which exhibits as the way to perfection 
the denial of man’s strongest instincts, through 
voluntary poverty, voluntary chastity, voluntary 
obedience.* ‘The world, which St. John exhorts 
his disciples not to love, because the love of it is 
incompatibie with the love of the Father, which 
he describes as lying in the wicked one, which 


* St. Thomas Aquinas writes: “The perfection of man con- 
sists in a total adhesion to God. . . . The religious life is insti- 
tuted principally for the gaining of perfection by means of 
certain exercises whereby the obstacles to perfect charity are 
removed. ... [It is] an exercise and training by which men 
arrive at the perfection of charity. For this it is necessary 
totally to withdraw the affection from worldly things.” And 
he goes on to point out that the instruments of such withdrawal 
are poverty, chastity, and obedience solemnly vowed. “By 
these three vows the religious state is suitably set up in its 
integrity.” —Summa, 2. 2x. q. 186, a. 1-7. 

D 


34 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [cH. I. 


over and over again in the New Testament the 
disciples of Christ are bidden to forsake and over- 
come, and which—such is the vitality of phrases— 
stands, even in our own day, for the complete anti- 
thesis of the Church, is the present visible frame 
of things, doomed, as those early preachers believed, 
soon to pass away with the lust thereof: the flesh, 
in which St. Paul declared no good thing to dwell, 
which it was his daily endeavour to keep under 
and to bring into subjection, is the whole of man’s 
lower or animal nature. Whatever is doubtful, 
this is clear.”* The smug optimism, which is now 

frequently paraded as Christianity, exhibits what 
Dean Church has well called “a strange blindness 
to the real sternness, nay, the austerity, of the New 
Testament.” T 


So much may suffice to indicate generally— 
which is enough for our present purpose—my 
reasons for holding that the various antitheistic 
theories current at the present day are reducible 
to Atheism or Agnosticism. J now go on to con- 
sider the former of these answers to The Great 
Hnigma. 

* Tam quoting from my Chapters in Huropean History, vol. 1. 
p. 89. 

+ The Oxford Movement, p. 19. 


CPA ETE Ry Up 
ATHEISM. 


I nave defined Atheism as the dogmatic denial of 
_ God. But, before I go on to discuss it, I ought 

to indicate what I understand by God. When 
I use that great name, I mean by it, with Kant, 
‘‘a Supreme Being, the First Cause or Creator of 
all things, by free and understanding action ;”’ and 
with Dr. Martineau, “a Divine Mind and Will, 
ruling the Universe, and holding Moral relations 
with mankind.” By an Atheist I understand 
one who denies this highest generalization of 
Monotheism. ‘Theistic belief has, of course, a 
history. The concept of Deity has been slowly 
evolved. Among our own Aryan ancestors it “was 
at first a generic conception. It applied not to 
one power, but to many. Even when the human 
mind tried to combine the idea of supremacy, and 
therefore of oneness, with that of Deity, this was 
done, at first, by predicating supremacy of single 
devas or gods only, each supreme in his own domain. 
After this stage, in which we find a number of 
single gods, neither co-ordinate nor subordinate, 


36 ATHEISM. [ cH. 


there follows the next, in which all the single gods 
were combined into a kind of organic whole, one 
god being supreme, the others subject to him, but 
to him only, and standing among themselves on 
a certain level of equality. After these two stages 
_. . follows in the end that of real Monotheism, 
a belief in one God, as excluding the very pos- 
sibility of other gods.” * For our present pur- 
pose we may put aside the tribes of men who are 
still in the stage of Henotheism or Polytheism. 
We are not concerned with them. And it is not 
worth while to fight as one that beateth the air. 
The Atheists with whom we are brought into 
contact are not the gainsayers of the gods many 
and lords many worshipped by those dwelling on 
the lower levels of religious thought. ‘They are 
the dogmatic deniers of a Supreme Agent, above 
and behind but distinct from nature, who makes 
all things to be, and ‘‘ with whom we have to do.” 


It may indeed be objected that such dogmatic 
denial is not worth answering. No doubt, in one 
sense, this is so. The Theistic idea is a living 


* FB, Max Miiller, Anthropological Religion, p. 75. Professor 
Max Miiller truly adds, “These stages in the development of 
the idea of the Godhead are not merely theoretical postulates. 
They are historical realities, which we may watch in many 
religions, if only we are enabled to follow their history in literary 
documents.” 


I. | DIXIT INSIPIENS. 37 


form of thought, not in the least affected by 
verbal negations. These merely touch the word. 
The concept remains inviolate— 
“For it is, as the air, invulnerable : 
And our vain blows malicious mockery.” 

Hence the Hebrew poet appears to be perfectly 
well warranted when he charges with folly the 
man who says in his heart there is no God. 
‘Dixit insipiens in corde suo, non est Deus.” 
The absolute and dogmatic Atheist. usually founds 
himself upon the argument that there can be no 
God, because He is not found as a finite force 
in the universe, and cannot be weighed. or 
measured; because He is not apprehensible by 
the senses, and cannot be seen, heard, touched, 
smelt, or tasted. What is one to say to a 
disputant who relies upon this absurdest of 
absurdities ? It is surely enough to send him to 
school to Voltaire for half an hour. Let him 
read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the article 
“Dieu” in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, and 
unless he is impervious to common sense, he will 
hardly dissent from that sage’s conclusion: “A 
demonstrative proof of the non-existence of God 
assuredly no one has ever found nor will find.”’ But 
indeed the rage of these fetid blasphemers—chiefly 
represented by the medico-atheistic school now so 
powerful in France—is in itself suspicious. ‘ Does 
any one take God aw sérieux?’’? one of them 
asked me not long ago. And I ventured to reply, 


38 ATHEISM. (on. 


‘At least, you and your friends would seem to do 
go: else you would not hate Him so bitterly.” 
Surely this intellectual and moral canaille merits 
no serious consideration from any thinker. ‘'o 
elance at it and pass by would be enough, save 
from one very practical consideration. We live 
in an age when ‘‘the masses”’ (as the phrase is), 
who have hitherto been nothing in the public 
order, have become everything, or are fast becom- 
ing everything. Political power has everywhere 
passed, or is passing, into the hands of those who 
are ‘‘as incapable of thinking as they are of fly- 
ing.” And among the masses the propagandists 
of Atheism are, everywhere, most active and most 
successful. Their methods differ in different 
countries, but in all worketh one and the selfsame 
spirit. In Germany it has assumed the form 
of that crassest, coarsest and most consistent 
Materialism which Heine declares, in his Con- 
fessions, scared him back into Deism ; and it is 
closely allied with a political party which aims at 
the entire overthrow of the public order, and the 
reconstruction of society upon a basis of Socialism. 
“These troops of destruction, these sappers whose 
axe threatens the whole social edifice, are im- 
measurably superior to the Chartists of England 
and the levellers and revolutionists in other lands, 
by reason of the terrible thoroughness (Konsequenz) 
of their doctrine; and in the madness which impels 
them there is, as Polonius would say, method. 


I. | DIVERSITIES OF OPERATION. 39 


Their more or less secret leaders . . . are, with- 
out doubt, the most capable heads and the most 
energetic characters of Germany.’’* These words 
of Heine are as true now as when they were 
written, nearly four decades ago. 

In England the Atheistic propaganda chiefly 
takes the form of an attack upon the Sacred Books 
of Christianity. The doctrine of the plenary 
inspiration of those venerable documents is the 
very corner stone upon which the popular religion 
of Great Britain rests. Dr. Bain, if my memory 
is not at fault, somewhere tells us of a worthy man, 
‘fa citizen of Edinburgh,’ who was a firm believer 
in Christianity, until he acquired a smattering of 
geology, when, being unable to reconcile the asser- 
tions in the first chapter of Genesis with the facts 
of that science, he applied to the whole Bible the 
rule ‘‘ falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,’’ abandoned 
his belief in God, and became a zealous Atheist. 
It is an instance of what is commonly happening 
in this country, and ‘‘ the open Bible theory ”’—as 
the phrase is—must be held largely responsible for 
it. Jam far indeed from questioning the value of 
the religious and moral and intellectual culture 
resulting from the familiar acquaintance with the 
sacred volume possessed by all classes in this land. 
But there is another side to the matter. ‘T'o place 
the Bible, without note or comment, in the hands 
of all able to read it, assuring them of its 


* Heinrich Heine’s Sammtliche Werke, vol. xiv. p. 275. 


40 ATHEISM. [cH 


complete verbal inspiration and absolute inerrancy, 
of its all sufficiency as a revelation of the Divine 
Will, so perfectly intelligible, that ‘a wayfaring 
man, though a fool,’ shall not err in interpret- 
ing it, is assuredly, in this age of ours, to play 
into the hands of the propagandists of Atheism. 
And of this they are quite well aware, for well- 
nigh all their publications—a considerable number 
of which lie before me, as I write—are directed to 
show the scientific and historical untrustworthi- 
ness of the sacred volume, and so to discredit 
the Deity, whose very voice it is alleged to be. 
The note and comment which Exeter Hall with- 
holds, the apostles of what calls itself Free 
Thought supply; the result being a wide diffusion 
of bitter and blasphemous Atheism, the fierce 
unintelligent denial of those who conceive 
themselves deceived by a false theophany, and 
who hasten to burn what they have adored. ‘The 
common people,” writes Mr. John Morley, with 
a significant touch of Voltairian scorn for the 
ignobile vulgus, ‘‘are wont to crave a revelation, 
or else they find Atheism a rather better syn- 
thesis than any other. They either cling to the 
miraculously transmitted message, with its hopes 
of recompense, and its daily communication of the 
Divine voice in prayer or sacrament, or else they 
make a world which moves through space as a 
black monstrous ship with no steersman.’’ * 
me Voltuire, by John Morley, p. 278. 


11. | A LESSON FROM FRANCE. 41 


It is, however, to France that we should turn 
for the completest view of the Atheistic propa- 
ganda. And what Atheism is in France, it is in 
the Latin races generally. I do not know where 
a better revelation is given of it than in certain 
catechisms which have been prepared as instru- 
ments for the atheizing of that country. If we would 
learn how the various forms of Christianity are 
apprehended and assimilated by the popular mind, 
there is no safer way than by consulting the 
hornbooks and manuals in which the dogmas of 
that faith are reduced to their essential elements, 
and expressed in the simplest statements. Thus, 
should a Protestant desire to know what Catholic 
teaching practically is, he will naturally consult 
Catholic catechisms—the most authoritative of 
which is, of course, that set forth by the desire 
of the Council of Trent. So the Shorter Cate- 
chism, prepared by the Assembly of Divines at 
Westminster, provides the best summary of the 
dogmas held by Presbyterianism and its kindred 
sects ; while, if we would discover the secret of the 
wholesome influence exercised by Anglicanism 
upon the general mind of this country for genera- 
tions, we shall find it in those pages of the Book 
of Common Prayer which put before us “a 
catechism, that is to say, an instruction, to be 
learnt by every person before he be brought to 
be confirmed by the Bishop:’’ a beautiful docu- 
ment, in which primary verities of Christian faith 


42 ATHEISM. lou. 


and morals are impressed upon the tender mind, 
in language at once simple and stately as that of 
the English Bible, And let no one suppose that 
the age of Catechisms is past. The Apostles of 
Atheism in France know better. They have 
discerned, rightly, that the catechetical form is 
unique in its adaptation to the wants of the 
masses; and they have displayed much practical 
wisdom in availing themselves of it. Three works 
lie before me, which have of late years been given 
by them to the world, in order to the rearing 
of the youth of their country in the tenets which 
they desire to substitute for the old doctrines of 
religion and morality. The smallest of these 
works—I will take them in order of size—is a 
duodecimo of eight pages, entitled, Le Pett 
Catéchisme dw Libre-Penseur. It is authorized, 
I observe, “pour le colportage””—a fact worth 
noting—and has been very widely disseminated 
since it was published about ten years ago. ‘The 
Catéchisme Populaire Républicain—a somewhat 
larger treatise—was given to the world some 
thirty years since, and has had a large sale (the 
edition before me is the thirtieth), although it is 
now, perhaps, a little out of date: events have 
moved fast during the last three decades. But 
both these compilations are as the Catholic Penny 
Catechism is to the Catechism of the Council of 
Trent, in respect of M. Edgar Monteil’s Caté- 
chisme du Libre-Penseur—a work which its author 


u.]) “LE CATECHISME DU LIBRE-PENSEUR.” 43 


describes as ‘‘destiné a porter au milieu des 
masses la vérité sur des maticres que la crédulite 
humaine maintient fort enracinées, a pénétrer 
dans les couches de la société moderne exploitées 
par la superstition.” The studies of which his 
Catechism is a résumé, would have filled folios, 
he tells us. It would have cost him less pains, 
he asseverates, to have presented in ten volumes 
what he has here compressed into three hundred 
pages: three hundred pages, so to speak, of the 
essence of Atheism. But his object was to be 
a connecting link (¢rait d’wnion) between savants 
and the populace; to put before the world 
a ‘condensed book, within the grasp of the igno- 
rant, intelligible to everybody.” It will be seen 
that M. Monteil has well grasped the right con- 
ception of what a Catechism ought to be. It is 
clear, too, that in ‘executing his arduous labour 
he was cheered and sustained by the true spirit of 
faith. ‘‘ Quant a nous,’’ he writes, ‘‘ notre récom- 
pense se trouvera en nous-mémes si par la publi- 
cation de ce catéchisme nous pouvons inciter les 
auteurs a renouveler par des livres conformés aux 
idées modernes, les livres qui corrompent l’homme 
des Venfance, et si par-dessus tout, nous avons 
contribué, encore plus que par nos ceuvres ante- 
rieures, 4 extirper l’erreur et a faire triompher la 
vertu.” Such were the beautiful aspirations with 
which M. Monteil betook himself to the composi- 
tion of his Catechism. Regarding the probabilities 


44 ATHEISM. [cH. 


of its achieving the success which he desiderates 
in extirpating error and promoting the triumph 
of virtue, my readers shall presently judge for 
themselves. Meanwhile, let me observe that the 
author already has his reward, to some extent, 
not only in the wide circulation of his work 
among an appreciative public, but in the plaudits 
of his fellow Atheists. Among other testimonies 
of great weight is that of the République Francaise, 
which solemnly blesses it, and pronounces it to 
be the best and most meritorious composition of 
its kind extant. And now, having thus surveyed 
the work from the outside, let us look a little at 
its contents, and learn from it what French 
Atheism is, illustrating M. Monteil’s teaching, 
where necessary, from the smaller compilations 
of which mention has been made. 


One indubitable merit of M. Monteil’s book is 
its admirable arrangement. He begins at the 
beginning and does not leave off until he has 
conducted us to the logical conclusion. As he 
well observes in his preface, ‘“‘ Il fallait étre systé- 
matique, absolu, pour que ce livre fut & son 
adresse.’  ‘‘Systématique’’ and ‘“‘absolu”’ he 
accordingly is. His work is divided into three 
sections. ‘T'he first treats of God; the second of 
Religion; the last of Morals. And in following 


Il. | THE ROOT OF THE MATTER. 45 


this order M. Monteil has evidently had in mind 
the maxim, ‘‘ Fas est et ab hoste doceri.” The 
religion which he seeks to replace rests upon the 
idea of God. Thus, the Church Catechism leads 
the child from his own name and the manner of 
its imposition to the conception of a Divine 
paternity ; and thence to the duties—religious and 
ethical—which flow from his relationship to the 
ineffable Being whom he has learnt to call ‘‘ Our 
Father.’’ M. Monteil must, then, I think, be 
credited with much astuteness in beginning with 
the primary tenet of all Theism, and so going to 
the root of the matter. Here are the four 
questions and answers wherewith he initiates his 
work. I reproduce his typography :— 

“© Q. What is God? 

‘“A. God is an expression. 

‘“Q@. What is the exact value of this expres- 
sion ? 

‘“A. The exact value of the word NATURE. 

““@. What is Nature ? 

‘‘A. The totality of all we know to exist in 
the infinite Universe. 

““@. What other definition can you give of 
Nature ? 

“A. It is the material world, and ALL is 
matter’? (p. 14). 

The Petit-Catéchisme gives to its teaching upon 
this high theme a political turn so deliciously 
grotesque that I must here quote it, although at 


46 ATHEISM. cH. 


the sacrifice of laying aside M. Monteil’s work 
for a moment. ‘‘ Do you believe in a Supreme 
Being?” that manual inquires of the neophyte. 
And the reply which it puts into his mouth is as 
follows :—‘‘ I only believe what my reason permits 
me to believe, and my reason refuses to admit the 
principle of the ‘Government of Nature’ by any 
being whatsoever. I am persuaded that Nature 
always has been, is, and always will be, republican, 
and consequently fitted to govern herself” * (p. 19). 

Verily, to speak in the gorgeous language of 
Oriental metaphor, which alone is adequate here, 
this author has strung a pearl of the first water 
upon the chaplet of Atheism. 

But to return to our Catéchisme du Inbre- 
Penseur. ‘The learned, then, have not found 
out God?” it goes on to ask. The answer is, 
‘No; they are all agreed in denying His exist- 
ence ;’’ a somewhat sweeping proposition, it must 
be confessed, but M. Monteil’s experience as a 
journalist in the République Francaise and other 
newspaper organs of Atheism has doubtless taught 
him the value of a slashing style. Nor, indeed, 
is there wanting high authority by which he might 


* Compare the Catéchisme Populaire Républicain :—“ Ceux qui 
prétendent que Dieu a créé Vhomme afin d’étre connnu, aimé et 
servi par lui n’exigent pas autre chose de vhomme que de 
renoncer 4 sa raison, 4 son intelligence, a sa liberté morale, de 
se nier soi-méme et de s’anéantir en face d’une puissance absolue 
dont il ne lui est accordé de comprendre ni Ja nature ni la 
justice” (p. 19). 


11] NO FIRST CAUSE. AT 


vindicate his contempt for exact accuracy. Thus 
he might appeal to the doctrine of the Patriarch 
of Ferney, so faithfully carried out by that great 
man upon many occasions :—‘‘ Mentez, mes amis. 
Il faut mentir comme un diable, non pas timide- 
ment, non pour un temps, mais hardiment et 
toujours. Le mensonge n’est un vice que quand 
il fait du mal.” Any stick Voltaire considered 
was good enough to beat /’Infime ; and doubtless 
M. Monteil thinks so too; ‘the disciple is not 
above his master.” The Catéchisme du Libre- 
Penseur, however, goes on to anticipate and dis- 
pose of the familiar argument, old as the days of 
the Hebrew Psalmist, and, probably, as the infancy 
of the human race: ‘ Celi enarrant;”’ the testi- 
mony of ‘‘ the spacious firmament” and ‘“ shining 
heavens ”’ to ‘‘ their great Original,’ who, ‘‘in the 
beginning created the heavens and the earth.” 

‘““@. If there is no God, who then created the 
heaven and the earth ? 

‘“A. Neither the heaven, nor infinity, nor the 
earth has been created. , 

‘‘@. Who created man and woman ? 

“A. Neither man nor woman has been created. 

‘““(). There is no First Cause, then ? 
_ “A, No; forall that we cannot prove scientifically 
has no existence, and may be denied until proof 
of the contrary’ (et se ne jusqu’a preuve du con- 
travreé, p. 16). 

This last sentence leads us to fear that, in the 


48 ATHEISM. [ cH. 


vast range of M. Monteil’s studies, logic must 
have been overlooked. On the next page he 
proceeds to another objection which, as he saga- 
ciously discerns, will present itself to the inquiring 
minds that he desires to form. 

‘©Q, How is it, then, that there are gods ? 

«4, Because man has invented them” (p. 18). 

And so the Petit Catéchisme: ‘‘ God is a spectre 
invented by priests to frighten timid minds (les 
faibles d’esprit) in order that these latter may cast 
themselves into their arms and endure more easily 
their domination.” 

The Catéchisme du Libre-Penseur goes on to 
press the argument from the presence of evil 
in this imperfect world. It concludes from this 
that ‘the divine individuality is a lie,” that 
“we ought not to believe in the existence of 
the individual named God that most religions 
have presented to us”’ (p. 24). ‘‘ Such a God 
has no existence, and it is not to an indepen- 
dent and creative Will that we can attribute this 
universal harmony’’ (p. 26), M. Monteil insists. 
It will be remembered, however, that at the 
opening of the Catéchisme du Inbre-Penseur the 
exact value of the expression God was stated to 
be the exact value of the word Nature; and now 
after thus accomplishing the purely iconoclastic 
part of his work, M. Monteil takes up this theme. 
It is significant that while teaching the crassest 
Atheism, he nowhere expressly avows it. He 


IL. | THE MASK OF PANTHEISM. 49 


prefers to mask it under the name of Pantheism. 
That, he tells us, is the true faith. And, by way 
of definition of Pantheism, he gives us the follow- 
ing question and answer :— 

‘““@. What do you mean in the present day by 
Pantheism ? 

‘‘ A. There is an all (wn towt)—the all of forces, 
the all of beings, the all of forms—which is God. 
He gives not, he receives not, he constitutes not, 
he is constituted (2d ne constitue pas, il est constitué). 
He is neither a force nor a form; by himself he is 
nothing at all (par lui méme il west que néant). 
He is no more one thing than another, but the 
whole (l’ensemble) of the objects and the worlds in 
infinity ”’ (p. 32). 

Obviously this new deity, in vindication of whom 
M. Monteil approvingly cites Holbach and La 
Mettrie, is (to quote one of Lord Beaconsfield’s 
happy phrases) merely ‘‘ Atheism in domino.” 
But let us follow our author as, with his usual 
prevision, he proceeds to anticipate and answer 
the gainsayer :— 

‘“@. Is Pantheism consistent with our scientific 
knowledge ? 

tetan Vos, 

“@. And yet it is not admitted by our two 
principal philosophic sects—that of the Positivists 
and that of the Materialists ? 

“A, True; but this is by reason of sectarian 
exclusiveness (par l’exclusivisme de secte). 


wy 


50 ATHEISM. [ CH. 


“Q, Explain yourself.” 

M. Monteil then proceeds to explain himself at 
some length, the upshot being that in what he 1s 
pleased to call Pantheism is to be found the 
reconciliation of these two sects of ‘‘ modern 
thought.” Here are the two questions and 
answers in which he disposes of this subject :— 

‘“Q. How does the Pantheist reconcile the 
Positivist and Materialist ? 

“4, By arguing to them thus: ‘ Your supreme 
law is science?’* ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you either find 
or place science outside Nature?’ ‘No.’ ‘It is 
then -in' Nature?’ “Yes.’- ‘It: 1s, theretore, 
incorporate with Nature?’ (Elle fait en conseé- 
quence corps avec la nature?) ‘Yes.’ ‘It proves 


to you the existence of natural things?’ ‘ Yes.’ 


“Do you know of anything that is, or can be 


outside; Nattre?”.' “Novi “Then,al thabiaskeo, 
everything may be summed up in the term 


Nature, and you are at one with the Pantheists.’ 
‘““Q. Can they, then, admit that Nature is God ? 
‘4, Doubtless, for it is then no more than a 


matter of expression. It is enough that they 


should be so obliging as to use the term God as 
well as Nature, admitting the two terms to be 
absolutely synonymous ”’ (p. 35). 
Atheistic Pantheism, or Pantheistic Atheism, 
* It is hardly necessary to remark that by “science” M. 


Monteil means physics. Neither he nor his Positivist and 
Materialistic friends recognize any sciences except the physical. 


u.] THE SOUL. 51 


with a tendency to a generous minimism which 
shall embrace Positivism, is, according to M. 
Monteil, the true solution of The Great Enigma. 
And now, having thus emancipated the neophyte 
from the old superstition about God, and reduced 
Him to something which is not either a force or a 
form, and which, taken by Himself, is nothing, 
the Catéchisme du Libre-Penseur proceeds to deal 
with that part of man hitherto popularly supposed 
to be immortal. It is related of Tom Moore, the 
poet, that upon one occasion, when plied with 
Atheistic discourse by Sir Charles Morgan, he 
remonstrated, ‘“‘ Pray, my dear Morgan, consider 
my immortal soul.” To whom the irascible 
surgeon: ‘“‘ Damn your immortal soul, sir; listen 
to my arguments.’ The adjuration was more 
vigorous than timely, and failed to reassure the 
trembling bard. M. Monteil is more considerate. 
His scholars may listen to his arguments without 
any terror, and may take his word for it that the 
soul is even a more absolute nonentity than the 
Pantheistic deity to whom we have been intro- 
duced. In the following trenchant manner does 
he dispose of this subject :— 

‘*@. What is the soul ? 

As Nothing: 

‘“(. It is not a thing then, existent in Nature ? 

ys Been top 

‘“@. What is the distinction between. soul and 
body ? | 


52 ATHEISM. [on 


‘‘ A. The distinction between soul and body is 
a simple analytical process (wn simple procédé 
analytique). 

‘“@. What is generally understood by the word 
soul ? 

‘A. Thought independent of matter is what is 
generally understood by it. 

‘*@. Can such independence exist ? 

‘““A. No: since everything belongs to the 
material order. 

‘‘@. The soul, then, does not return to God 
who is all? 

“A. No: For God is formed of that which 
exists, and the soul does not exist”’ (p. 36). 

Such is the simple syllogism wherewith M. 
Monteil reassures us upon this grave matter. The 
Petit Catéchisme, providing, so to speak, ‘ milk 
for babes,”’ expresses itself even more bluntly, as 
follows :— 

*Q. What is man ? 

‘A. Man is one of the most favoured products 
of the earth; but Nature makes no more account 
of him than of the smallest insect. In conse- 
quence of his material conformation, he possesses 
a stronger dose of intelligence (wne plus forte dose 
dintelligence) than any other animal. But it is 
no less a fact that he exists by virtue of the same 
principle as the most vulgar companion of St. 
Anthony.” | 

The world has travelled far since the question, 


it. ] CIRCE’S WAND. 53 


What is man? was asked by the royal poet of 
the Hebrews. ‘Quid est homo, quod memor es 
ejus? aut filius hominis, quod visitas eum ?’’— 
man, made a little lower than the angels, and 
crowned with glory and worship. How are the 
mighty fallen! A few words of these sages of 
Atheism, and, as by a touch of Circe’s wand, the 
glory and worship die away, and we are reduced 
to our proper rank among the swine. It was a 
right apprehension of ‘the spirit of the years to 
come,” a true prescience of the impending needs 
of the world, which led Mr. Carlyle to embody, 
m the Latter-Day Pamphlets, his invaluable “ Pig 
Propositions.” 

So, then, according to the Atheistic gospel, 
there is no soul in man; and, if no soul in him, 
then no future life for him. But M. Monteil, 
with his usual care to be thorough, is explicit 
upon this latter point :-— 

“Q. The materiality of the soul, then, in- 
volving its negation, there is no future life ? 

‘‘A. No: as the soul no longer constitutes for 
us an independent and imperishable individuality, 
there is no future life’’ (p. 38). 

M. Monteil here favours us with an elaborate 
note to prove that the immediate consequence of 
belief in a future life is suicide. It is true that 
the facts do not bear him out, such belief having 
been pretty general in the world for a good many 
ages, and not having resulted in universal felo de 


54 ATHEISM. [CH. 


se. But so much the worse for the facts, which, 
it must be allowed, have a most coarse, incon- 
siderate way of deranging the neatest Atheistic 
arguments. It is not M. Monteil’s fault if 
people were too stupid to follow out their own 
principles. He returns, however, to his point :— 

‘‘Q, There is, then, no future life ? | 

‘4, No: there is no future life; unless, in- 
deed, it be that we continue to live on by our 
works. What we leave behind us of our labour, 
what we bequeath of our thought, what we sow 
of our body, what is incarnate in our children, 
after having been incarnate in us—that is the 
only future life’ (p. 40). 

M. Monteil’s practical conclusion is: ‘‘ We 
must apply to the real world, to the earth, which 
we see, and which we enjoy, the belief in eternity 
which in Theism is applied to a fiction ”’ (p. 58). 


Pass we now to Part II. of the Catéchisme du 
Libre-Penseur, 11 which M. Monteil devotes some 
hundred and fifty pages to the subject of religion. 
He divides this portion of his volume into three 
sections. In the first he deals with the theology 
of the Christian Church; in the second, with its 
‘moral philosophy; in the third he is at the 
pains to summarize in a sort of discourse or 
homily the opinions exposed in the two _ pre- 


u. | CHRISTIANITY EXPLAINED. 5d 


ceding sections. It might at first seem, to 
shallow judgments, as though this part of his 
work were superfluous: since, if there be no un- 
dying soul in man, and no God to whom we shall 
give account for the deeds done in the body, it 
is but lost labour to attack Christian theology, 
which is the science of God, or Christian morals, 
which take account of His existence and His 
attributes. But, as I have said, one great charac- 
teristic of M. Monteil’s work is its thoroughness ; 
and in a note (p. 69) he tells us, ‘‘ The object of 
this part of the Catechism is to establish the 
historic truth about the Christian religion, and 
to show that a system at once philosophic, and 
moral, and rational may be substituted for it.” 
According to M. Monteil, then, Christianity, like 
other religions, has proceeded (décowlé) from the 
foolish Theistic hypothesis. It is a purely human 
work. It has brought into the world no new 
truth. Considered as a fiction, it is but a pan- 
theistic theory. Considered as a social religion, 
its results have been disastrous indeed, for it has 
retarded civilization by fifteen hundred years; 
meanwhile conducting men to the brutality, to 
the prostrate degradation of the most revolting 
immorality. Nor let any one say, our teacher 
protests, that this is the work of its ministers ; 
that it is a good religion in itself, but that it has 
been spoilt by priestcraft. No; M. Monteil is 
indeed anti-clerical to the very marrow of his 


56 ATHEISM. [cu 


bones, as becomes the friend and brother in 
journalism of the late MM. Paul Bert and Gam- 
betta. But he allows that the priests—so much 
the worse for them—are ‘dans la logique de la 
religion.”’ ‘It is the religion itself,” he urges ; 
‘it ig the Old, it is the New Testament, as well 
as the Popes and Councils, that have accom- 
plished the fine work” above mentioned. ‘It 
is the religion itself which is baneful, deadly; in 
Jehovah as in Jesus, in the Pentateuch as in the 
Gospels.”’ * 


* It may be well to subjoin the text of the passages I am 
quoting :—‘La Terre avait peuplé le Ciel, elle se dit que 
e’était le Ciel qui l’avait peuplée. De lhypothese déiste ont 
découlé les religions, et le christianisme n’a été, comme les 
autres inventions, qu’ceuvre humaine ; seulement il n’a apporté 
dans le monde, en religion comme en morale, aucune vérité 
nouvelle. Considéré comme une fiction, le christianisme n’est 
qu’une théorie panthéistique; considére a4 la lettre c’est un 
monothéisme devenu un polythéisme anthropomorphiste. .. . 
Si l’on considére le christianisme comme religion sociale, on 
doit admettre que ses résultats ont été désastreux, qu’ils ont 
reculé la civilisation de prés de quinze siécles. . . . En effet, ce 
n’est pas le clergé uniquement qu’il faut accuser de conduire 
Vhomme a une bestialité, A un anéantissement de la plus révol- 
tante immoralité, c’est la religion elle-méme, c’est 1]’Ancien, 
c’est le Nouveau-Testament, ce sont les peres de l'Eglise tout 
autant que les Papes et les Conciles qui ont accompli cette 
belle couvre. Ne tenons donc jamais ce langage; la religion 
est une bonne chose en elle-méme, ce sont les prétres qui la 
gitent. Non, les prétres sont dans la logique de la religion. 
Tout ce qu’on peut exiger des prétres, c’est un compte sévere 
de leurs plus minces actions... . Mais on ne saurait em- 
pécher leur action dissolvante et pernicieuse sur les consciences, 
c’est-A-dire véritablement anéantir les prétres, qu’en les frap- 


Il. | EXITIABILIS SUPERSTITIO. 57 


Such is the succinct view of Christianity put 
before the neophyte of Atheism by his father in 
the faith. Let us glance at the pages in which 
it is worked out in detail. Those which deal with 
the Founder of Christianity I prefer, indeed, to 
pass over. But I must note the apology with 
which we are presented for the persecution of His 
primitive followers. These martyrs and confessors, 
M. Monteil would have us know, ‘“ professed 
sentiments of revolt against classes of society 
other than their own, and practised a communism 
which was the very negation of the domestic 
hearth, so honoured at Rome;”’ “ their common 
meals or agapes soon degenerated into shameful 
concubinage;’”’ they ‘‘ turned everything into 
ridicule, broke the laws, and despised all that 
attaches one to life;’’ thereby justly incurring 
both the imputation of ‘‘odium humani generis,”’ 
fastened upon them by the philanthropic pagans 
of the decadent empire, and the severities which 
followed. And such conduct, M. Monteil points 
out, was quite congruous with the “ exitiabilis 
superstitio”’ as which he paints their religion. 
pant dans leur sacerdoce méme, c’est-d-dire en frappant la 
religion, car c’est la religion qui est nuisible, funeste, dans 
Jehowah comme dans Jésus, dans le Pentateuque comme dans 
les Evangiles. Il faut prendre le mal dans sa racine et couper 
la racine. Le clergé forme les branches et les feuilles chargées 
de répandre le poison contenu dans le tronc, que le tronc 
s’abatte donc, et les branches et les feuilles se dessécheront. 


Toute tentative de conciliation est désormais impossible” (pp. 


198-203). 


58 ATHEISM. (cH. 


The following cullings from his Catechism may 
serve to indicate the outlines of his picture :— 

‘Q. Is the Christian religion the source of all 
morals ? 

‘“A. No; for it does not contain a single trait 
of morality which is peculiar to it, and which is 
not derived from the religions or the philosophies 
which preceded or accompanied it. 

“ Q. Is not, then, that which is peculiar to the 
Christian religion moral ? 

‘‘ A. For the most part, no. 

““Q. Does the Church regard men as of an 
elevated nature or a high morality ? 

‘““A. No. From Genesis onward the Lord pro- 
claims: ‘The spirit of man and all the thoughts 
of his heart are inclined to evil from his youth 
upward.’ * 

‘“‘ Q. How does the Church regard woman ? 

‘A, ‘The Church hates, execrates, abominates 
woman ’”’ (p. 155). 

‘“Q. What is this first result of this hatred of 
woman ? | 

‘“A, The first result of this abasement of woman 
is to favour concubinage. 

‘““Q. Does not the Church prohibit concubinage ? 

pial Ror 

“Q. Does the Church admit marriage ? 


* M. Monteil is by way of quoting the Vulgate, Gen. viii. 
21: “Sensus enim et cogitatio humani cordis in malum prona 
sunt ab adolescentia sua.” 


UI. | CHRISTIANITY AND THE FAMILY. 59 


‘A. She admits it, but she detests it’ (p. 158). 

‘““Q. Has not the Church blessed incestuous 
marriages ? | 

‘A. Yes; the Church has gone so far as to 
bless marriages between brothers and sisters. 

“Q. Does the Christian religion inspire a child 
with respect and love for his parents ? 

‘“A. No. The ancient Law said, ‘ Honour thy 
father and mother so as to live long upon earth.’ * 
But since the coming of Christ, one must no more 
live long (al ne faut plus vivre longuement). The 
anticipation of death is a happiness, and the titles 
of father, mother, brother, sister, given by Nature, 
count for little. Jesus said, ‘Call no one on earth 
your father, for you have only one Father who is 
in Heaven.’ + St. Paul says, ‘Obey your parents, 
but only according to the law of the Lord.’ 

“Q. The Church, debasing man and woman 
and detesting marriage, is evidently contrary to 
the spirit of the family (esprit de famille) ? 

‘“ A, Yes: and this is how the Son of God has 
come to consolidate the family, and to bring peace 
into the world, ‘Think ye that I have come to 
bring peace upon earth? No, I tell you, but 
divisions. . . . The father shall be divided against 
the son, and the son against the father; the 
mother against the daughter, and the daughter 


* “Ut sis longevus super terram.”’— Vulgate. 
t “ Vous n’avez qu'un pére qui est dans le ciel:”? Unus est 
enim Pater vester, qui in coelis est. 


60 ATHEISM. [ CH. 


against the mother; the mother-in-law against 
her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law 
against her mother-in-law. The brother shall 
deliver his brother to death, and the children 
shall rise up against their fathers, and cause them 
to be put to death.’ 

‘““Q. Has the Church established equality among 
men and destroyed slavery ? 

“A. No. Those are two profound errors. The 
Church has never established equality among men, 
either in this world or the other, and nothing is 
more false than to attribute. to Christianity the 
abolition of slavery. . ... ‘Christ,’ says J. Jd. 
Rousseau, ‘preaches nothing but servitude and 
dependence. His spirit (esprit) is too favourable 
to tyranny that it should not always profit thereby. 
True Christians are made to be slaves’ (p. 165). 

“ Q. Does the Church honour labour ? 

fas Nos 

‘“Q. Does the Church allow of property ? 

‘‘ A. No; the Church does not allow of property. 

Qa uWihye? 

‘A, Because Christianity is eminently com- 
muuistic. 

‘“Q. On what words do you found this assertion ? 

“A. Christ knows of nothing but misery and 
bareness. Many times did he repeat that the rich 
should not enter into the kingdom of heaven. He 
says, ‘ Whosoever does not renounce all that he 
possesses cannot be my disciple. Sell all that 


II, | CHRISTIANITY AND PROPERTY. 61 


you have.’ There is no greater negation of 
property than Christianity. The first disciples 
of Jesus bring to the feet of the apostles all that 
they possess. ... There are sects of Christians 
who, founding themselves on certain verses of 
the Gospels, have carried—nay, still carry—-com- 
munism so far as to apply it to women. Common 
possession (/a communauté) administered by the 
priest is the only true way of living Christianly. 
very Christian who is a proprietor is no Christian 
at all; and ‘a camel should sooner pass through 
the eye of a needle than arich man should enter 
into the kingdom of heaven’”’ (p. 168). 


It must be owned that M. Monteil has here 


displayed the wisdom of the serpent. The peasant 
proprietors of France, among whom his Catechism 
has been largely circulated, however little they 
may make of much of it, can hardly fail to be 
touched closely by this part, or to turn the eye 
of distrust upon M. le Curé, as the minister of a 
religion which proscribes equality, and is incom- 
patible with property. And, like a skilful general, 
the preacher of Atheism follows up his advantage. 
‘‘ All kinds of violence,’ he asseverates, ‘‘ hatred, 
vengeance, murder, incest, joined to avarice (that 
characteristic vice of the clergy) are the special 
endowments of the clerical body” (p. 174). 
‘‘Pleasures, fortune, rule—such are their morality.” 
His practical conclusion is that the world must 
break off for good and all from the Christian faith 


2 = es, 
Ca 


62 ATHEISM. [on 


(p. 203). ‘Let us abandon,” he pleads; “let us 
abandon religion completely, and take refuge in 
PHILOSOPHY—the product of all reason, and 
the source of all morality’ (p. 207). 


And now let us glance at the philosophy of 
Atheism: the source of all its morality. ‘ Philo- 
sophy,” M. Monteil postulates, ‘‘must not be 
separated from human nature.” Few will refuse 
to go this mile with him. But he would have 
them go twain; and his next, to feebler spirits, 
will appear a long mile. ‘‘ Don’t let us believe,”’ 
he urges, ‘‘that people can’t be wise unless they 
are ascetic or live without passions. No: the 
passions of man are his surest and most faithful 
guide.” And of these passions, M. Monteil regards 
what he calls love (meaning thereby the sexual 
instinct*) as the chief, and, as of right, pre- 
dominant. Upon this theme he rises to lyric 
enthusiasm. ‘‘C’est par l’amour qu'il peut sentir, 
comprendre: c’est par l'amour qu il étend son 
individu 4 l’humanité toute entiere.”’ In the pas- 
sions, then, as the budding Atheist learns, he will 
find the source of true philosophy: “they open 
to the reason all the gates of morality, of science, 


* “T/amour est une inclination réciproque de l’homme et de 
la femme, dont tous les sens physiques réunis forment l’attache 


la plus puissante,” &c. (p. 219). 


| A NEW RULE OF LIFE. 63 


of beauty, and of love’ * Thus does la libre pensée 
justify its name and prove itself a true emanci- 
pating agency. The old _ repressive morality, 
acknowledged throughout Europe for so long, 
rested on conscience as “the Voice of God in 
the nature and heart of man;” the Divine Law, 
identical with the Supreme Being Himself, im- 
planted in the intelligence of all His rational 
creatures, against which it is never lawful to 
go, since, as the Fourth Lateran Council Says, 
“Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, edificat ad 
gehennam.’’’ M. Monteil makes as short work of 
conscience f as he does of gehenna. In its place, 
as the rule of life, Atheism enthrones concu- 
piscence.t The criterion of right and wrong is 


* “Ne séparons point la philosophie de la nature humaine, et 
n’allons pas croire qu’on ne peut étre sage qui si l’on est ascéte 
et si lon vit sans passions, dans l’inertie. Les passions de 
"homme lui sont le guide le plus stir et le plus fidéle, c’est par 
elles qu’il apprend A se servir de toutes les richesses de son cceur 
et 4 répandre les lumiéres de sa raison. C’est par l’amour qu’il 
peut sentir, comprendre, c’est sur l’amour qu’il doit méditer, 
e’est par l’amour qu’il étend son individu A ’humanité toute 
entiere. Que la raison tempére la violence de la nature, rien de 
mieux, si la nature est violente, mais que les passions ouvrent 
a la raison toutes les portes de la morale, de la science, de la 
beauté et de l’amour” (p. 208, note). 

1 Iam aware that he uses the word once or twice; but he 
uses if in an entirely different sense from the theological, as 
will be seen hereafter. 

{ I use the word in its proper theological sense: “Sciendum 
est concupiscentiam esse commotionem quamdam ac vim animi, 
qua impulsi homines quas non habent res jucundas appetunt.” 
—Cat. Concil. Triden., pars. iii. ev x. 


64 ATHEISM. (on. 


thus succinctly laid down for the catechumen: 
‘¢ All that man desires and seeks out of self-love 
(par amour de lui-méme) is good; and evil all that 
is contrary to his nature ”’ (p. 238). Good, in fact, 
is what we like; evil what we dislike. In the 
following three questions and answers this matter 
is very clearly put :— 

‘“Q, What is good ? 

“A. Good is the development of the faculties 
of man in conformity with his nature. ‘Good,’ 
says Jean Reynaud, ‘is the sole principle of which 
our nature does not weary, and, sooner or later, 
evil, with the consequences of various kinds which 
it engenders, fatigues or repels Nature.’ 

“Q. How do we discover the principles of good? 

‘A, In the study of Nature. 

‘© Q, What is the good given to man ? 

‘A, Laromiguitre tells us: ‘Pleasures of the 
senses, pleasures of the intellect (de Jesprit), 
pleasures of the heart—these, if we knew how to 
use them, are the good things scattered in pro- 
fusion across the path of life’”’ (p. 241). 

Such is the glorious liberty of Atheists. In 
them a great work is wrought, exactly the con- 
trary of that spoken of by St. Paul. Being made 
‘liberi justitie,’ free from the bugbear called 
righteousness, and the rule of the imaginary 
‘individual named God,” they have their fruit unto 
gratification of the passions, and the end—why, 
that is in itself the end. 


iI. ] HUMAN NATURE ESSENTIALLY GOOD. — 65 


“O pleasure, you’re indeed a pleasant thing, 
Although one must be damned for you, no doubt,” 


sighed Lord Byron, haunted by dim reminiscences 
of “creeds that refuse and restrain.’’ But only 
let Atheism have its perfect work, and the instinct 
of retributive justice, however « deep-seated in our 
mystic frame,’’ shall be eradicated, and the bold 
human appetite shall be freed from its last 
restraints. Does any colder and more cautious 
spirit shrink from the probable consequences 
to society of this consummation ? Let him 
be of good cheer: let him know that human 
hature is essentially good (p. 215), that man, 
unspoilt by religion, is just, loving, and lovable, 
whatever the phenomena of life may seem to 
teach to the contrary. Let him leave the beggarly 
elements of concrete fact, and betake himself to 
“the high priori road;” let him enter into his 
chamber and be still, and then, shutting out the 
world and opening his Rousseau, reassure himself, 
if not by the example, at all events by the rhetoric 
of that evangelist, from whom M. Monteil cites an 
appropriate text (p. 216), 

Man, then, according to the Atheistic philo- 
Sophy, is naturally good: the passions are the 
true guides of human life: their gratification is 
the true end of human life: and other life there is 
none. This being so, morality, duty, and law are 
very simple matters, and are soon disposed of. 
Morality—with which, as M. Monteil tells us, 


La 
w 


66 ATHEISM. [cu 


conscience is one (la morale et la conscience ne font 
qwun, p. 242)—is “ the sentiment that prescribes 
to us prudent conduct” (wne sage conduite),* and 
is “determined by the reason” (p. 242), which, 
apparently, is nothing but phosphorus.t ‘* Duty 
consists in rendering us devoted (devoués) to our 
affections, and to the laws to which we have con- 
sented, and rebellious against oppression ”” (p. 244). 
“The law is a natural verity, which people formu- 
late, and to which they consent to conform their 
conduct” (p. 245). It is ‘based on right ;’’ and 
the principal rights of man are those proclaimed 
in the “ Declaration” of ‘‘ the immortal French 
Revolution, to which the inhabitants of the whole 
world (previously slaves) owe it that they are 
citizens’ (p. 246). 


This is the New Gospel which the poor have 
preached to them: an Atheistic Materialism which 
is practically the negation of all ethics. I say 
“practically,” for I do not deny that a dogmatic 
Atheist might insist upon the supreme authority 
of the moral law, the essential difference between 
right and wrong. But, as a matter of fact, in the 

* Compare the sixth of the “Pig Propositions: “ The pig 
knows the weather; he ought to look out what kind of weather 
it will be.” | 

+ “Ta raison, a dit je ne sais plus quel physiologiste, c’est 
du phosphore,” p. 212, note. 


1. | PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES. 67 


vast majority of instances, dogmatic Atheists lose 
this transcendental idea, with all other transcen- 
dental ideas. Their Atheism means a crude dis- 
belief in all that lies out of the senses’ grasp: it 
means the most crass and vulgar animalism. The 
overwhelming majority of men are not, and cannot 
be, philosophers. For them, in the Theistic concept, 
is the source of all justice, the type of all virtue, 
the sanction of all ethics. Mazzini did but point 
to an indubitable fact when he wrote—“‘ The idea 
of an intelligent First Cause once destroyed, the 
existence of a moral law supreme over all men, 
and constituting an obligation, a duty imposed 
upon all men, is destroyed with it.’ That idea 
alone supplies an effectual frenwm cupiditatum. 
Deprived of it, men, in general, find no sufficient 
motive for thwarting their inclinations, opposing 
their desires, subduing their passions. And, in- 
deed, here is one of the greatest recommendations 
urged in favour of Atheism by those who preach 
it ad populum. Formerly, its propagandists en- 
deavoured to veil the demoralizing results of their 
dogma. In our day these results are boldly 
: proclaimed as an evidence of its superiority over 
a Theism which reasons of righteousness, tempe- 
rance, and judgment to come. This is a sign of 
the times well worthy of being pondered. Certain 
it is, that in proportion as Atheistic doctrines spread 
in any land, there is an absence of repugnance to, 
and remorse for vice. How widely these doctrines 


\i ai 


68 ATHEISM. [cH 


have been disseminated of late years, in well-nigh 
every country, is notorious. To use the elementary 
schools as a means for inculcating them, has been 
the cherished object of the antichristian sectaries 
who have so largely obtained political power 
throughout Europe. Well-nigh half a century ago 
M. Gustave Flourens wrote—“ Our enemy is God. 
Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom. If 
men would make progress, it must be on the basis 
of Atheism.” A great deal of such ‘ progress”’ 

has been achieved by the malignant irreligion 
which dominates the ministry, the parliaments, 
the municipal institutions in France, in Italy, and 
in the Latin races generally. It has laboured 
abundantly, and with only too much success, to 
atheize the countries in which it has obtained the 
upper hand: to banish the idea of God from public 
and private life; and it has rightly discerned that 
the most effective means of compassing that end 
is to shape in its own image and likeness popular 
education. It is training the coming generation 
to believe that the answer to The Great Enigma is 
not moral, but material: to put aside faith in the 
Divine as a senseless and servile superstition; to 
find the rule of right and wrong in self-interest ; 
to see in ethics but a regulation of police; to 
acquiesce in physical fatality ; and to practise a 
brutal egoism. Such are the human animals, with 
the wild beast unchained in them, which Atheism is 
rearing as the sovereigns of the democratic future. 


4 


II. | A PROGNOSTICATION. 69 


And this in the name of liberty! As though 
liberty were possible without religion respected, 
duty revered, charity practised: in a word, without 
virtue, and the self-sacrifice which virtue involves, 
recognized as the necessary bonds of the social 
organism. As though brute force, and the slavery 
which brute force implies, were not the only 
regimen possible for the bete humaine, deprived 
of ‘the mighty hopes that make us men.” “La 
France en mourra, peut-étre, mais ce sera une 
expérience curieuse pour l’humanité,’’ observed 
M. Renan, as he meditated upon these things. 
The prognostication of that sage cannot be far 
wrong, whatever we may think of his attitude of 
scientific dilettantism towards the future of his 
country.* 


* Fortunately, M. Renan’s philosophic calm on this important 
subject is not universal among his more intelligent countrymen. 
A French correspondent sends me, with other weighty evidence 
to the contrary, the following resolution recently passed by the 
Conseil d’Arrondissement de Nantes :— 

“Lue conseil, considérant que l’expérience prouve de plus en 
plus l’insuffisance de l’enseignement de la morale dans les écoles 
primaires, s’il ne prend comme base essenticlle les devoirs envers 
Dieu et l’obéissance due a sa loi; considérant que cette insuffi- 
sance ressort clairement des rapports et des documents officiels 
par lesquels 1’Administration elle-méme a voulu se renseigner ; 
considérant, en outre, que le compte rendu général de la justice 
criminelle démontre une progression lamentable dans les crimes 
et délits commis par les enfants et les jeunes gens, dont pres de 
29,000 ont été traduits devant les tribunaux pendant la seule 
année 1887 (la derniére dont les résultats aient été publiés) ; 

“Considérant que les suicides d’enfants et d’adolescents, 
- naguére encore presque inconnus parmi nous, se sont multipliés 


70 ATHEISM. [ CH. II. 


i tel point depuis plusieurs années, qu’ils ont atteint le chiffre 
effrayant de 443 pour la méme année 1887; considérant qu’on 
est d’autant plus fondé 4 voir une étroite corrélation entre cette 
douloureuse statistique et le développement du nouveau systeme 
d’éducation primaire, que l’instruction morale donnée a l’enfant 
reste évidemment dépourvue de toute autorité et de toute sanc- 
tion, si elle ne s’appuie tout d’abord sur les grands principes de 
lordre religieux, notamment: la connaissance de Dieu comme 
régle de toute justice et comme souverain maitre des hommes, 
la pleine obéissance due a sa loi, la nécessité d’une vie future ot 
chaque créature entre dans la destinée définitive qu’elle s’est 
elle-méme préparée ici-bas par Ses Ceuvres ; 

“ Considérant qu’une pareille situation révéle un péril social 
et national de la plus haute gravité, qu’il est urgent de conjurer ; 

“‘ Considérant que le conseil est fondé d’une fagon plus spéciale 
4 donner son avis sur les questions intéressant particuliérement 
larrondissement de Nantes, 

‘“Hmet le voeu que, dans les écoles primaires de l’arrondisse- 
ment, la morale ne reste pas séparée de la religion; que l’en- 
seignement des devoirs envers Dieu y soit pris comme base 
fondamentale et nécessaire de tous les devoirs qui incombent a 
Vhomme, et qu’d cet effet les lois sur l’instruction publique 
recoivent toutes les modifications nécessaires.”’ 


CHAPTER III. 
CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. 


Tur name of M. Renan, with which I ended the 
last chapter, might, not improperly, stand at the 
head of this. He is the very type of the variety 
of Agnosticism which I propose now to discuss. 
For, as I have already said, I distinguish between 
two types of the Agnostic doctrine: the merely 
sceptical or critical, which is content with pro- 
fessing nescience of God, and the positive or 
scientific, which erects a system of belief upon the 
foundation of that nescience. The former of these 
varieties—it might not improperly be called, even 
at the cost of a pleonasm, Negative Agnosticism— 
and its answer to The Great Enigma, I shall con- 
sider in the present chapter. I do not think a 
better view of it can be obtained than that which 
is exhibited by M. Renan’s career and writings. 
Joubert observes that ‘‘the authors who have 
most influence are merely those who express per- 
fectly what other men are thinking; who reveal 
in people’s minds ideas or sentiments which were 
tending to the birth.” These words admirably 
indicate the chief cause of M. Renan’s immense 


72 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


popularity. His spiritual history is the spiritual 
history of millions writ large. He used hisincom- 
parable literary skill to interpret the mind of 
his generation to itself. Hence it is that he is a 
prophet so abundantly honoured in his own country, 
and wherever the language and literature of his 
country are known. His sound has gone out into 
all lands. It would be difficult to mention any 
writer whose influence in the civilized world is 
just now more diffused and more penetrating and 
more effective. 

For nearly thirty years that influence has been 
at work. It dates from the publication of his 
Vie de Jésus, which may be said to have taken the 
world by storm. The effect produced by that 
work on the public mind may be judged of from 
the fact that, in France alone, fifteen hundred 
books or pamphlets about it were published within 
twelve months from its appearance; most of them, 
I need hardly add, attacking it with extreme 
severity. But whether men applauded or anathe- 
matized the Vie de Jésus, none could deny the 
high gifts of which it made full proof. It may, or 
it may not have been, what is called “an epoch- 
making book.” It certainly made the hterary 
fortune of its author. Not even the most super- 
ficial of ‘‘ general readers’ could be insensible to 
its delightful phrases, so finely chiselled, to its 
flowing and harmonious periods—recalling the 
cadences of music—to the artistic perfection of 


m1. ] THE “VIE DE JESUS.” 73 


its word-painting, to the exquisite grace of its 
delicate dilettantism, to the seductive sweetness 
of its sceptical piety. Savants might gibe at it as 
mere literary perfumery, fit only to titillate the 
nostrils of the multitude. But they have had to 
reckon with it. Not even the most orthodox of 
subsequent commentators on the evangelical his- 
tory have written as they would have written 
before it was published; while those of doubtful 
orthodoxy, or of no orthodoxy at all, have found 
in it a rich mine of ideas, a full fountain of inspi- 
ration. But although the most popular of M. 
Renan’s works—some three hundred thousand 
copies of it have been sold in France alone—I 
feel sure that its author would not have deemed it 
the best, and that no competent critic would so 
deem it. The Hssay on Averroes, the General 
History of the Semitic Languages, the Studies in 
Keligious History, the work on the Book of Job, 
the Hthical Essays—all published before the Vie 
de Jésus—are of more account than it from the 
point of view of scholarship, and certainly are 
not inferior to it in literary workmanship. The 
same may be said of the remaining volumes of 
the Sources of Christianity, of the Philosophical 
Dialogues, of the very striking dissertations entitled 
Contemporary Questions, of the History of the 
People of Israel. 

The mere mention of these works—and they 
are by no means a complete list—is enough to 


74 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


indicate another of the causes of M. Renan’s 
influence. One of the most opulent natures that 
have adorned modern literature, he takes captive 
his readers by the breadth of his erudition and 
the abundance of his ideas, no less than by the 
magic of his style. A philologist—he was that 
first and foremost—an historian, a theologian, a 
philosopher, a publicist, he appealed to thoughtful 
men of every variety of intellectual character. 
And he seldom appealed in vain. It is hard 
for even the most inveterate prejudice to refuse 
to hear the voice of the charmer; the more 
especially as to his dJlecebre suaviloquentie —to use 
St. Augustine’s phrase—is, joined the fascination 
of subtle and stimulating paradox. Mordant irony 
lurking beneath the most ingenuous candour, 
voluptuous sensism extracted from the purest 
idealism, universal pyrrhonism expressed in the 
language of religion—such is the piquant ragout 
which M. Renan served up, in the lordly dish of 
his superb French, to the jaded palate of the 
nineteenth century. It is not difficult to under- 
stand how the century has relished it. But 
it is very difficult to bring so unique an artist 
within the ordinary formulas of criticism; or 
adequately to form a general estimate of his mul- 
tiform achievements. M. Sainte-Beuve felt the 
difficulty. ‘‘ Pour parler convenablement de M. 
Renan,” he writes, ‘si complexe et si fuyant 
quand on le presse et quand on veut lembrasser 


11. | “A TISSUE OF CONTRADICTIONS.” 75 


tout entier, ce serait moins un article de critique 
qu’il conviendrait de faire sur lui qu’un petit 
dialogue 4 la maniére de Platon.’’ Similarly, M. 
ftenan himself judged that, in the present state of 
the human intellect, the dialogue alone was suitable 
for the exposition of his philosophic ideas. “‘ Truths 
of this order,’ he writes, in the Preface to Le 
Prétre de Némi, “‘should be neither denied nor 
affirmed directly. They are not the subject of 
demonstration. All we can do is to present them 
in different aspects and to exhibit their strength 
or their weakness, their necessity, their equiva- 
lence.” Unquestionably this form of composition 
suited M. Renan admirably, and he used it with 
supreme skill to exhibit himself according to his 
own humorous description, as ‘‘a tissue of con- 
tradictions, one half of him engaged in demolishing 
the other half, like the fabulous beast of Ctesias, 
who ate his paws without knowing it.’’ ‘‘ The 
clear perception of a truth,” he tells us, ‘‘ does 
not in the least hinder one from discerning the 
opposing truth, the next minute, with just the 
same clearness.” ‘The contradictions with which 
his writings are replete, are no accident. They were 
a habit; nay, more, they were a law of his nature. 
Indeed, he found in them an evidence of veracity : 
‘‘Malheur a qui ne se contredit pas une fois par 
jour.” No doubt all this may be, to some extent, 
conceded. Certain it is that the mere juxtaposi- 
tion of divergent elements of thought often gives 


76 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


us more help towards grasping the verity under- 
lying them, than that which would be afforded by 
a premature and arbitrary synthesis. But the 
dialogue has peculiar dangers and temptations of 
its own for a mobile and subtle intellect. Even 
Plato himself did not altogether escape them. 
They are dangers and temptations to which a 
Frenchman is especially exposed. For, as Amiel 
says, truly enough, ‘‘ the Frenchman’s centre of 
gravity is always outside himself; he is always 
thinking of others; always playing to the gallery.” 
M. Renan throughout his brilliant volume of Dia- 
loques Philosophiques reminds me of one of Moore’s 
nymphs— 
‘“‘ Lesbia has a wit refined ; 


But when its points are gleaming round us, 
Who can tell if they’re designed 
To dazzle merely, or to wound us ?”’ 


There was a marvellous coquetry in his intellect ; 
at one moment dallying with materialism, at the 
next fondly embracing the ideal; now, passionate 
in professions of mysticism; then, cold and dis- 
dainful in negation or indifference. Yes; the 
dialogue was admirably suited to M. Renan’s genius. 
And no doubt it would serve excellently well for 
an entertaining and instructive exhibition of him 
as an artist. But for the sober estimate of him as 
a teacher, which I am about. to essay, the beaten 
track of criticism, in spite of the difficulties 
pointed out by M. Sainte-Beuve, is the more 


III. | A THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 77 


excellent way. It leads more surely than the 
dialogue to definite conclusions. 


In order to appreciate M. Renan’s influence as 
a teacher, it will be well to inquire first into the 
intellectual constituents of his character. And 
here we shall derive signal help from his intensely 
interesting volume, Souvenirs d’Enfance et de 
Jeunesse,—a work, which, as he tells us, he wrote 
‘in order to transmit to others the theory of the 
universe which he carries in himself ;”’ which 
we may indeed take as presenting his answer to 
The Great Hnigma. The book is full of charms 
of every kind; admirable bits of description, as 
the pictures of old Brittany; masterpieces of 
rhetoric, as the famous prayer on the Acropolis; 
finished pages of irony, as the account of M. de 
Talleyrand’s conversion. But, to my mind, its 
greatest charm lies in its veracity. In this species 
of composition it is very difficult to avoid the 
artistic insincerity of which, perhaps, the most 
conspicuous example is afforded by Rousseau’s 
Confessions. Throughout M. Renan’s Souvenirs, 
there breathes that antique candour which so 
mightily fascinates us in a very different book— 
Cardinal Newman’s Apologia. I may remark, in 
passing, upon the curious and instructive parallel 
which these two works offer, both of them of the 


78 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. fon, 


highest value as documents for the spiritual his- 
tory of the nineteenth century. JI may observe, 
too, that all the other writings of both masters 
may, in a true sense, be regarded as commentaries 
upon, or explanations of, their autobiographies. 
There is not a page of Cardinal Newman which is 
not a real revelation of its author. The same may 
be said of the works of M. Renan, who, very early 
in life, felt, that ‘‘to write without expressing 
something of one’s own personal thought was the 
vainest exercise of the intellect.’? Of course M. 
Renan did not mean us to suppose that every- 
thing in his Souvenirs is to be taken absolutely. 
Like the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the 
Hebrew prophet whose example Bunyan imitated, 
he used similitudes. “All that I have written 
is true,” he testifies, ‘‘but not of that kind of 
truth which is required for a Biographie Universelle. 
Many things have been introduced to provoke a 
smile (afin quon source); and, if only custom would 
have allowed, I should have written here and 
there, in the margin, ‘cum grano salis.’”’ Nay, 
as he tells us elsewhere, he indulges sometimes in 
“little literary evasions (petits fauxfuyants litté- 
raires) required by the view of a higher truth, or 
by the exigencies of a well-balanced phrase.’ If, 
after these admonitions, the reader chooses to 
misapprehend the candid author, why he must 
thank his own dulness for his mistakes. "We may, 
on the whole, fully credit M. Renan when he 


11. | “THE CANDID FRIEND.” 79 


claims for himself, ‘‘ Dans mes écrits j’ai été d’une | 
sincérité absolue.’’? Indeed, it is this very sincerity © 
which is his greatest offence in the eyes of some 
of his critics. He is ‘‘ the candid friend,” in whom 
the Anti-Jacobin poet discerned the worst of foes. 

And now, in considering M. Renan a little more 
closely, it will be well, according to the fashion of 
the day, to begin with heredity, the force of which, 
indeed, in the determination of moral and mental 
qualities, no candid investigator can deny. M. 
Renan was a Breton. And in him, as in Chateau- 
briand and Lamennais before him, the qualities of 
his race were strongly marked. Physically, he 
resembled hundreds of good curés who may be 
seen in Lower Brittany. A friend of my own, 
indeed, some years ago, was greatly astonished at 
finding, as he thought, in one of the parish 
churches there, the author of the Vie de Jésus 
clad in strange ecclesiastical costume, and de- 
voutly sustaining some humble part in the offices 
of religion. He rubbed his eyes, and after a few 
minutes discerned his error. It was an obese and 
orthodox beadle whom he had mistaken for the 
Administrator of the College of France. The 
characteristics of the Breton were as clearly im- 
printed upon M. Renan’s intellectual constitu- 
tion as upon his physical form. _ One of the 
chief of them is a vivid yet chastened and in- 
expansive imagination, the heritage of the people 
dwelling in that land of mysterious ocean, and 


80 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


melancholy plains, and grey skies, and desolate 
rocks, which M. Renan himself so admirably 
described in his Poésie des Races Celtiques : ‘ Quel- 
que chose de voilé, de sobre, d’exquis, 4 égale 
distance de la rhétorique trop familere aux races 
latines, et de la naiveté refléchie de ]’Allemand.” 
But M. Renan had also Gascon blood in him 
through his mother, whom he describes as lively, 
candid, and inquisitive (curveuse). To her he owed, 
as he tells us, ‘‘une certaine habileté dans l'art 
d’amener le cliquetis des mots et des idées,’’ and 
‘‘le penchant gascgon a trancher beaucoup de diffi- 
cultés par un sourire,”’ ‘‘ but for which,”’ he piously 
adds, ‘‘my salvation would have been better 
assured.” In this complexity of origin he found 
the source, to a great extent at all events, of his 
apparent contradictions. ‘‘I am double,” he 
writes ; ‘‘sometimes one part of me laughs while 
the other weeps. That is the explanation of my 
gaiety. As there are two men in me, there is 
always one who has reason to be satisfied.”’ 
Ernest Renan was born in 1828, in Tréguier, a 
small town which had grown up under the shadow 
of a vast monastery founded in the last year of the 
fifth century, by St. Tudwal. The monastery has 
disappeared, but the cathedral remains, ‘‘ chef 
dcouvre de légéreté, fol essai pour réaliser en granit 
un idéal impossible.” This architectural paradox, 
he tells us, was his first master. Under its vaulted 
roof he passed long hours, breathing the monastic 


m.)] A SCHOOL OF FAITH AND REVERENCE. 81 


atmosphere in this highly unmonastic age. The 
town and its neighbourhood presented the same 
ideal and religious character. It was a great 
school of faith and reverence, in which hig child- 
hood was passed. His father, the master of a 
small coasting boat, was drowned when Ernest 
was three years old. And this misfortune, doubt- 
less, served to enhance the piety of the devout 
household. The boy grew up with the fixed 
determination to be a priest. Good and devout, 
he accepted the faith of his fathers, as “the 
absolute expression of truth,” ‘the supernatural 
summary of what man ought to know.” His state 
of mind at twelve, nay at fifteen, was precisely 
“celui de tant de bons esprits du xvii? siécle, met- 
tant la religion hors de doute.” His intellectual] 
superiority over his comrades was marked from the 
first. Criticism and philosophical sagacity, of 
course, did not enter into the instruction of those 
excellent priests who were his first masters, he 
tells us. ‘ But they taught me,” he adds, ‘‘ what 
was worth infinitely more: love of truth, respect 
for reason, the seriousness of life.” Everything in 
his early years seemed to indicate for him a modest 
ecclesiastical existence in Brittany. “I should have 
made a very good priest,” he continues; “indulgent, 
paternal, charitable, blameless in my life and con- 
versation. My career would have been on this 
wise. At twenty-two I should have been Professor 
in the College at Tréguier. At fifty, Canon, and 
G 


82 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. — [ CH. 


probably Vicar-General at St. Brieuc: very con- 
scientious, much respected, a good and safe 
director. No very enthusiastic admirer of the 
new dogmas, I should have dared to say, like 
many worthy ecclesiastics after the Vatican 
Council, ‘Posui custodiam ori meo.’ My anti- 
pathy for the Jesuits would merely have led me 
not to speak of them. A substratum of modified 
Gallicanism would, however, have lain concealed 
under a profound knowledge of canon law.” Such 
was the prospect before M. Renan, when, at the 
age of fifteen, a slight incident completely changed 
his future. 

That incident was that his success at the 
College at Tréguier, where he had carried off all 
the prizes of his class, attracted the notice of the 
Abbé Dupanloup. This eminent ecclesiastic— 
subsequently famous as Bishop of Orleans—had 
been appointed, by the Archbishop of Paris, 
Superior of the Little Seminary of St. Nicholas 
du Chardonnet, and was anxious to fill his house 
with promising recruits. He offered LHrnest 
Renan a place there, and the offer was accepted. 
At first, the change did not suit the young Breton. 
He fell ill. It was the Abbé Dupanloup’s care 
of him, he thinks, which saved his life. He 
gradually became accustomed to the routine of 
seminary existence. M. Dupanloup he found “un 
éveilleur incomparable,’ absolutely unrivalled in 
the power of drawing out what was best in each 


It. | “I SHALL BE A PRIEST.” 83 


of the young students. The education of St. 
Nicholas was literary to an extent very unusual in 
Catholic seminaries. M. Renan tells us that he 
had come to Paris “ morally formed, but as 
ignorant as he well could be.” He now learned 
“that something existed besides antiquity and the 
Church; that there were contemporary French 
authors worthy of some attention.” Despite its 
claim to be an asylum “far from the madding 
crowd’s ignoble strife,” the atmosphere of the 
century circulated pretty freely in St. Nicholas. 
It was M. Dupanloup’s wise design to form priests 
who should be not merely theologians with Moses 
on the mount, but “learned in all the wisdom of 
the Egyptians” among whom their work was to 
he. To St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, M. Renan 
owed his initiation into modern literature. But 
if “the superficial humanism” which he acquired 
there destroyed the first naiveté of his faith—as he 
thought it did—it by no means planted in his mind 
anything that could properly be called doubt. 
When, at the end of his first year in the college, 
‘a full bourse’ was awarded him, and he was told 
that it was given with no restriction as to his 
future career, he replied calmly, ‘‘I shall be a 
priest.’’ And during the whole of his course there, 
ho question as to his vocation to the ecclesiastical 
state occurred to him. 

When his three years at the Little Seminary 
were completed, M. Renan quitted it for the 


84 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


Grand Seminary of Saint Sulpice, where four years 
more of training awaited him. The first two of 
these were spent at the “succursale” of Issy, and 
were devoted to philosophy. The philosophy 
taught was scholasticism in Latin; ‘not the 
barbarous and infantine scholasticism of the 
thirteenth century, but what may, perhaps, be 
called the Cartesian Scholasticism, which was 
generally adopted for ecclesiastical instruction in 
the eighteenth century, and stereotyped, so to 
speak, in the three volumes known as La 
Philosophie de Lyon. ‘“ lowe,” M. Renan testified, 
‘the clearness of my intellect, and in particular a 
certain skill in division—an art of the first import- 
ance, for it is one of the conditions of the art of 
writing—to the scholastic exercises, and above 
all to geometry, which is the application par 
excellence of the scholastic method.” Here M. 
Renan obtained some acquaintance with the 
philosophical writings of Cousin, and of Jouffroy, 
and heard rumours of German thought. But the 
authors he read habitually were Pascal, Male- 
branche, Euler, Locke, Leibnitz, Descartes, Reid, 
Dugald Stewart. The physical sciences—especially 
general natural history and physiology—greatly 
attracted him, and his studies in this department 
shook his confidence in metaphysics. ‘‘J’apergus 
Vinsuffisance de ce qu’on appelle le spiritualisme: 
les preuves Cartésiennes de l’existence d’une ame 
distincte du corps me parurent toujours tres 


ur.| “ YOUNG, INCONSEQUENT, AND UNCRITICAL.” 85 


faibles: dés lors j’étais idéaliste et non spiritualiste, 
dans le sens qu’on donne au mot. Un éternel 
fiert, un métamorphose sans fin me semblait la loi 
du monde. La nature m’apparaissait comme un 
ensemble ot la création particuliere n’a point de 
place, et ot, par conséquent, tout se transforme.”’ 
Do we ask how it was that these conceptions did 
not banish from M. Renan’s intellect scholasticism 
and Christianity, with which they are clearly at 
variance? He replies: ‘‘ Parce que j’étais jeune, 
inconséquent, et que la critique me manquait.”’ 
But others, or at least one other, already saw in 
M. Renan, what his youth, his want of logic and 
of criticism, prevented him from seeing in himself. 
His professor of philosophy, M. Gottofrey, observed 
him narrowly; and, with the instinct of piety, 
divined the true state of his mind. At last, upon 
a certain occasion, M. Renan was engaged in a 
public disputation, on some philosophical matter ; 
when the vigour of his objections to the orthodox 
position, his manifest dissatisfaction with the 
arguments traditionally accredited and received, 
provoked a smile from some of the listeners, and 
M. Gottofrey, who was presiding, stopped the 
argument. In the course of the evening, the 
professor sent for the too candid disputant, and, 
with the eloquence of deep conviction, warned him 
that overweening confidence in reason was contrary 
to the spirit of Christianity—that rationalism 
was incompatible with faith. Growing strangely 


86 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


animated, M. Gottofrey went on to reproach the 
young man with his too exclusive devotion to 
study. ‘‘Research? What is the good of it? 
All that is essential has been already found. It 
is not by science that souls are saved.’ And 
then, gradually becoming more excited, he said, 
in passionate accents, ‘‘ You are no Christian.”’ 

‘IT have never in my life,’ M. Renan tells us, 
‘“‘felt more fright than that which I experienced 
on hearing those words uttered in a ringing voice. 
I tottered, as I left the room. And all night long 
‘You are no Christian’ resounded in my ears like 
a great peal of thunder.’’ The next day he poured 
his trouble into the ear of his confessor, an 
excellent man, who saw nothing, and wished to 
see nothing; who soothed him with words, and 
bade him dismiss the matter from his mind. ‘He 
did not in the least understand the character of 
my mind, nor divine its future logical evolution. 
M. Gottofrey did. He saw clearly enough. He 
was right; fully right. I now recognize it com- 
pletely. Writing thirty-five years afterwards, I 
discern the deep penetration of which he made 
proof. He alone was clear-sighted, for he was quite 
a saint. It needed his transcendent illumination 
of martyr and ascetic to discover what completely 
escaped those who directed my conscience with 
so much sincerity, so much goodness, in other 
matters.”’ 


Yielding, then, to the counsels of his confessor, 


1.] “NO CHRISTIAN.” 87 


M. Renan put aside, for the time, the revelation 
of himself made to him by M. Gottofrey; and 
when his two years at Issy were accomplished, 
proceeded for his theological studies to Saint 
Sulpice. There, his conduct was irreproachable, 
as it had been throughout the whole of his 
previous career, and in due time he received the 
tonsure and was admitted into minor orders. 
Theology and Biblical exegesis were now his chief 
subjects of study, with results which all the world 
knows. JI am concerned, for my present purpose, 
to indicate how those results were reached. At 
the basis of dogmatic theology lies the thesis De 
Vera Religione, the object of which is to prove 
the supernatural character of the Christian religion 
—that is, of the canonical scriptures and the 
Church. The next step is to prove the dogmas 
of the Church by Scripture, the Councils, the 
Fathers, and the theologians. M. Renan gradually 
became convinced of the impossibility of demon- 
strating that the Christian religion is, more 
specially than any other, divine and revealed; 
nay, further, it appeared to him certain, that in 
the field of reality accessible to our observation, 
no supernatural event, no miracle has ever occurred. 
He was led to the conclusion of M. Littré, that 
‘investigate as you will, you will never find that 
a miracle has been wrought under conditions 
where it could be observed and verified.’ Again, 
historical facts seemed to him absolutely irrecon- 


88 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. OH. 


cilable with the theory that the doctrines of 
Christianity, as they were defined at Trent, or 
even at Nicwa, were what the Apostles originally 
taught. While his mind was revolving these 
weighty matters, he betook himself to the study, 
first of Hebrew, and then of German, which intro- 
duced him to the new exegesis distinctive of the 
nineteenth century, and led him to apply to the 
Semitic documents of Christianity the grammatical 
and historical interpretations which are applied to 
the other books of antiquity. The result was that 
‘“‘the traditional thesis”? as to the date, author- 
ship, and inerrancy of the Hebrew Sacred Books 
—a thesis which he had been taught to consider 
essential to Christianity—soon grew incredible to 
him. But let me, in this connexion, quote his 
own words :-— 


‘Dans un livre divin, en effet, tout est vrai, et, deux contra- 
dictoires ne pouvant étre vraies 4 la fois, il ne doit s’y trouver | 
aucune contradiction. Or l’étude attentive que je faisais de la 
Bible, en me révélant des trésors historiques et esthétiques, me 
prouvait aussi que ce livre n’était pas plus exempt qu’aucun 
autre livre de contradictions, d’inadvertences, d’erreurs. II s’y 
trouve des fables, des légendes, des traces de composition tout 
humaine. II n’est plus possible de soutenir que la seconde 
partie d’Isaie soit d’Isaie. Le livre de Daniel que toute ortho- 
doxie rapporte au temps de la Captivité, est un apocryphe com- 
posé en 169 ou 170 avant Jésus-Christ. Le livre de Judith est 
une impossibilité historique. |L’attribution du Pentateuque a 
Moise est insoutenable, et nier que plusieurs parties de la 
Genése aient le caractére mythique, c’est s’obliger & expliquer 
comme réels des récits tels que celui du paradis terrestre, du 
fruit défendu, de l’arche de Noé. Or on n’est pas catholique si 


III. | “THE TRADITIONAL THESIS.” 89 


l’on s’écarte sur un seul de ces points de la thése traditionnelle. 
Que devient ce miracle, si fort admiré de Bossuet: ‘Cyrus 
nommé deux cents ans avant sa naissance’ ? Que deviennent 
les soixante-dix semaines, bases des calculs de l’Histotre unit- 
verselle, sila partie du livre d’Isaie ot Cyrus est nommé a été 
justement composée du temps de ce conquérant, et si pseudo- 
Daniel est contemporain d’Antiochus Hpiphane? L’orthodoxie 
oblige de croire que les livres bibliques sont les livres de ceux a 
qui les titres les attribuent. Les doctrines catholiques les plus 
mitigées sur l’inspiration ne permettent d’admettre dans le 
texte sacré aucune erreur caractérisée, aucune contradiction, 
méme en des choses qui ne concernent ni la foi, ni les moours. 
- . . Cette théorie d’inspiration, impliquant un fait surnaturel, 
devient impossible 4 maintenir en présence des idées arrétées du 
bon sens moderne.” * 

The conclusion of the whole matter for M. 
Renan was that ‘his direct study of Christianity, 
undertaken in the most serious spirit, did not 
leave him enough faith to be a sincere priest; 
while, on the other hand, it inspired him with too 
much respect to allow of his resigning himself to 
playing an odious comedy with beliefs most worthy 
of respect.” He had the courage of his con- 
victions. On the 6th of October, 1845, he quitted 
Saint-Sulpice, leaving behind him the faith which 
he had once hoped to teach. It was with him as 
with the Patriarch of old, ‘‘when with his staff 
he passed over that Jordan. He parted with all 
that his heart loved, and turned his face towards 
a strange land. He went with the doubt whether 
he should have bread to eat or raiment to put 


on.” ‘‘Ceux qui me connaissent,’’ he wrote to his 


* Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse, p. 229. 


90 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


confessor, ‘“‘avoueront, j’espere, que ce n’est pas 
Vintérét qui m’a éloigné du Christianisme. ‘Tous 
mes intéréts les plus chers ne devaient-ils pas 
m’engager 4 le trouver vrai? Les considérations 
temporelles contre lesquelles j’ai a lutter eussent 
suffi pour en persuader bien d’autres; mon ccur a 
besoin du Christianisme ; l’Evangile sera toujours 
ma morale, l’Eglise a fait mon éducation, je aime. 
Ah! que ne puis-je continuer 4 me dire son fils! 
Je la quitte malgré moi... . Le Christianisme 
suffit a toutes mes facultés, excepté une seule, la 
plus exigeante de toutes, parce qu’elle est de droit 
juge de toutes les autres.”’ 

Religious unbelief, contemptible when it 1s—as 
we considered it in the last chapter—the outcome 
of animal passions, rebelling against ‘ creeds that 
refuse and restrain,” is, at all events, respectable 
if it is the result of conscientious inquiry. ‘There 
is a true sense in the oft-quoted lines of Lord 
Tennyson concerning the faith that lives in honest 
doubt. It is not surprising to learn that M. Renan 
met with nothing but kindness from the worthy 
ecclesiastics with whom his youth had been passed. 
M. Dupanloup, in particular, was goodness itself 
to the ex-seminarist, as might have been ex- 
pected from so noble and generous a nature. 
‘‘Are you in need of money?” he wrote. “It 
may well be that you are. My poor purse is at 
your service. Would that it were in my power 
to offer you goods more precious.” M. Renan 


m1. ] DEPAYSE. 91 


expressed warm thanks for this proposal, as indeed 
he well might; but he did not avail himself of 
it. His deeply-cherished sister, Henriette, placed 
at his disposal twelve hundred francs, which she 
had saved; and this sum, relieving him from 
immediate anxiety as to the morrow, was, he tells 
us, the foundation of the independence and dignity 
of his life. 


It would be beside my present purpose to follow, 
in detail, M. Renan’s subsequent career. At first 
he felt himself an utter alien—dépaysé—in this 
work-a-day world, where his lot was now cast. It 
was to him as a cold and arid desert, peopled by 
pigmies. And his distress was heightened by his 
mother’s unhappiness; her letters rent his heart. 
She passed her days in singing the old religious 
verses known as Les Cantiques de Marseilles, her 
favourite among them being The Song of Joseph :— 


“OQ Joseph, 6 mon aimable 
Fils affable ! 

Les bétes t’ont dévoré; 
Je perds avec toi l’envie 
D’étre en vie ; 

Le Seigneur soit adoré! ” 


‘“‘T exerted all my ingenuity,” M. Renan says, 
‘in inventing ways of proving to her that I 
was still the same ‘fils affable’ as in the past. 
Little by little the wound healed. When she 


92 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


saw me still good and kind to her, as I always 
had been, she owned that there were several ways 
of being a priest, and that nothing was altered in 
me but my dress, which was indeed the truth.”’ 
Yes, that was indeed. the truth. ‘ Cucullus 
non facit monachum.” Secular costume does not 
make the layman. The external change which 
had passed over M. Renan made no change in his 
way of thought. ‘The studies which I had so 
long pursued at the seminary,” he tells us, ‘‘ had 
taken such hold upon me that my only thought 
was to go on with them. The sole occupation 
which seemed to me worth living for, was to 
continue my critical researches upon Christianity 
by the more abundant methods which lay science 
offered.” M. Renan was what he called him- 
self, ‘un prétre manqué.”’ ‘I was born a priest 
a priort,’ he elsewhere says, and the work of 
his life was to engraft modern criticism upon 
his religious temperament. It is a saying of 
Jouffroy, ‘‘ Man believes by instinct and doubts 
by reason.’ The faith of his childhood dwelt 
with M. Renan as a sentiment. Its poetry sur- 
vived, side by side with the criticism which has 
been fatal to it as a creed. Here is an explana- 
tion of the two voices which are constantly heard 
throughout his writings. His utterances differ, 
according as it is the poet, or the critic, that speaks. 
It would be easy to accumulate from his volumes 
passages breathing the purest spirit of piety ; that 


111. | AN AMBITIOUS PROJECT. 93 


abnegation, that elevation, that idealism which are 
the essence of all religion. Indeed, as every one 
knows, he himself, for some years, cherished the 
project of extracting from his works a number of 
edifying extracts which might serve as a book 
of devotion for fair readers while assisting at Mass. 
The height of his ambition, he asserted, would be 
attained if he might thus make his entry into the 
Church, ‘‘sous la forme d’un petit volume in-18, 
relié en maroquin noir, tenu entre les longs doigts 
effiles dune main gantée.” Unquestionably, the 
effect upon these charming devotees might be salu- 
tary if the compilation were made with sufficient 
care. 
“Das ist alles recht schén und gut. 


Ungefahr sagt das der Pfarrer auch, 
Nur mit ein bischern andern Worten,”’ 


says poor Gretchen, after listening to Faust’s 
eloquent exposition of his somewhat nebulous 
creed. The fashionable lady might say the same 
of a volume of Lectures Pieuses selected from 
M. Renan’s writings. Nay, it may even be 
conceded that he was not without warrant when 
he reproached some of the manuals of la petite 
dévotion, which he desired to supersede, as replete 
“‘des faiblesses, des erreurs, des choses qui 
entretiennent la femme dans la facheuse habi- 
tude de trop pratiquer avec l’absurde.” More 
guarded must be our attitude towards his claim 
that he alone, in his time, really understood 


94 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


the Divine Founder of Christianity, and the 
Umbrian Saint, in whom the image of the Crucified 
seems most perfectly reproduced (‘‘J’ai pu seul en 
mon siecle comprendre Jésus et Francois d’Assise”’). 
Still, unquestionably, whatever grave objections 
may be made, and ought to be made, from the 
point of view both of critical science and of 
religious reverence, to the Vie de Jésus, there is 
some warrant for the contention that it presents 
a living embodiment of the purest idealism, where 
the popular theology had been too apt to offer 
a dead abstraction. M. Scherer claims for its 
author: ‘*C’est M. Renan qui, le premier, a fait 
rentrer Jésus dans le droit commun de V’histoire, 
et par conséquent dans la réalité. Il a rendu ainsi 
au Christianisme, au Christianisme durable, au 
Christianisme spirituel un service.”* No doubt 
this is too strongly put. But there is enough 
truth in the view which M. Scherer thus expresses 
to render his words worth citing. And assuredly 
there are in the Vie de Jésus, as throughout M. 
Renan’s writings, many passages which the most 
orthodox of his critics might be well pleased to 
have written. How true and how admirably 
expressed is the following :— 

‘Ce vrai royaume de Dieu, ce royaume de Vesprit, qui fait 
chacun roi et prétre ; ceroyaume qui, comme ce grain de sénevé, 


est devenu un arbre qui ombrage le monde, et sous les rameaux 
duquel les oiseaux ont leur nid, Jésus l’a compris, l’a voulu, l’a 


* Meélanges d'Histoire Religieuse, p. 132. 


S11. | “RECHT SCHON UND GUT.’ 95 
fondé. . . . Il a congu la réelle cité de Dieu, la ‘ palingénésie ’ 
véritable, le|Sermon sur la montagne, Vapothéose du faible, 
Vamour du peuple, la réhabilitation de tout qui est humble, vrai et 
naif. Cette réhabilitation, il l’a rendue en artiste incomparable 
par des traits que dureront éternellement. Chacun de nous lui 
doit ce qu’il y a de meilleur en lui. . . . De nos jours mémes, 
jours troublés ot Jésus n’a pas de plus authentiques continua- 
teurs que ceux qui semblent le répudier, les réves d’organi- 
sation idéale de la société, qui ont tant d’analogie avec les 
aspirations des sectes chrétiennes primitives, ne sont, en un sens 
que l’épanouissement de la méme idée, une des branches de cet 
arbre immense oti germe toute pensée de l’avenir, et dont ‘le 
royaume de Dieu’ sera éternellement la tige et la racine. 
Toutes les révolutions sociales de Vhumanité seront, entées sur 
ce mot-l&. Mais entachées d’un grossier matérialisme, aspirant 
4 Vimpossible, c’est 4 dire de fonder luniverselle bonheur sur 
les mesures politiques et 6conomiques, les tentatives ‘ socialistes ’ 
de notre temps resteront infécondes jusqu’a ce qu’elles prennent 
pour régle le véritable esprit de Jésus, je veux dire l’idéalisme 
absolu, ce principe que pour posséder la terre il faut y re- 
noncer.” * 


How profound again the dictum—which recalls 
one of Spinoza’s weightiest sayings—‘‘ La plus 
haute conscience de Dieu qui ait existé au sein 
de Vhumanité a été celle de Jésus.” And once 
more, how penetrating the appeal in the Etudes 
d’ Histoire Religieuse: ‘‘Si vos facultés vibrant 
simultanément n’ont jamais rendu ce grand son 
unique que nous appellons Dieu je n’ai plus rien 
x dire; vous manquez de l’élément essentiel de 
notre nature.” 

True indeed. ‘‘Das ist alles recht schén und 
gut.”” But now, if we turn from the poet to the 


* Vie de Jésus, pp. 282-288, 7°" ed. 


96 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


critic, we learn that it is impossible to say whether 
this Deity, concerning whom, and whose kingdom, 
these very excellent things were spoken, really 
exists. We read in the Souvenirs that the clear 
scientific view of a universe where no volition 
higher than man’s acts in an appreciable manner, 
was to M. Renan, since the first months of 
1846, an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast. 
And again, in another page of the same book, we 
are told, “It is by chemistry at the one end, and 
by astronomy at the other, it is above all by 
general physiology, that we truly grasp the secret 
of existence, of the world, of what people call 
God.”” And if we turn to one of M. Renan’s most 
recently published volumes,* as likely to contain 
the ultimate light which he was able to radiate 
upon the high theme, we read as follows:—‘ The 
word God is in possession of the respect of hu- 
manity ; it has in its favour a long tradition; it 
has been employed in the finest poetry. To sup- 
press it, would be to puzzle, to bewilder man- 
kind (dérouter Vhumanité). Although it is what 
the scholastics call ‘ univocal,’ it corresponds to 
a sufficiently precise idea—the summum and the 
ultemum: the line at which humanity stops in 
the ladder (échelle) of the infinite . . . God, 
Providence, Soul, are so many good old words, 
a little heavy, but expressive and respectable. 


* L’ Avenir de la Science: Pensées de 1848, p. 475. This 
volume was published in the year 1890. 


ul. | DIEU, EST-IL OU NEST-IL PAS? 9% 


Science will explain them. It will not, with 
advantage, find substitutes for them. What is 
God for humanity but the transcendental summary 
of its supra-sensible wants, the category of the 
ideal—that is to say, the form under which we 
conceive the ideal, just as space and time are the 
categories under which we conceive bodies?” Do 
we say, Well and good; but are we to understand 
that this ‘category of the ideal’’ exists? ‘‘ Ce 
Dieu est-il ou n’est-il pas?”’ M. Renan replies, 
‘Questions of being are beyond us.’’ (Les ques- 
tions de l’étre nous dépassent). And so elsewhere 
he writes, ‘‘ Le probleme de la cause supréme nous 
déborde et nous échappe: il se résout en poémes 
(ces poémes sont les religions) non en lois: ou, 
s'il faut parler ici de lois, ce sont celles de la 
physique, de lastronomie, de l’histoire, qui seules 
sont les lois de l’étre et ont une pleine réalité.”’ * 


M. Renan was, in fact, a poet penetrated by the 


* T quote from the “ Table Analytique,” and give M. Renan’s 
words as I find them. But when he writes “univocal” I 
suspect he meant “analogical,” which is the proper school 
term. In his Philosophic Fragments, M. Renan tells us, “ Toute 
proposition appliquée 4 Dieu est impertinente, une seule exceptée: 
‘Tl est.’” But in another place, in the same volume, we read 
“Tyabsolu de la justice et de la raison ne se manifeste que dans 
Vhumanité: envisagé hors de 'humanité cet absolu n’est qu'une 
abstraction... . L’infini weaiste que quand il revét une forme 
finie” (p. 3826). The italics are my own. 

H 


fe 


98 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. (cH. 


beauty, dominated by the majesty of the religious 
sentiment. He was also a critic whose last word 
is that the Object of the religious sentiment—if 
Object there be—is beyond our knowledge: that 
we can affirm nothing of it, not even its existence. 
But his scepticism, wherein, he tells us, he found 
the happiness of his life, was not confined to the 
domain of religion. In the province of morality 
he discovered the same fundamental doubt. Here, 
too, his first dogma was the rejection of all dogmas. 
His critical method was fatal to that eternal dis- 
tinction between Right and Wrong—not made but 
apprehended by the practical reason—which is 
the only true foundation of ethics: to the supreme 
claim of the moral law as a Divine order ruling 
throughout the universe in voluntary allegiance to 
which human virtue consists. True, indeed, it 
is that passages may be found in his writings 
wherein these august verities are proclaimed. 
Thus, in his preface to his translation of the 
Book of Job, we read, ‘‘ Duty with its incalculable 
philosophical consequences, in imposing itself upon 
all, resolves all doubts, reconciles all oppositions, 
and serves as a foundation to rebuild what reason 
destroys, or allows to crumble away. Thanks to 
this revelation, free from ambiguity or obscurity, 
we affirm that he who has chosen the right is the 
truly wise man.’’ And so in the preface to his 
Lissais de Morale et de Critique: ‘‘ Morality is 
the one thing eminently serious and true, and, 


III. | THE ANNIHILATION OF MORALITY. 99 


by itself, it suffices to give meaning and direction 
to life. Impenetrable veils hide from us the secret 
of this world, whose reality is at once irresistible 
and oppressive. Philosophy and science will for 
ever pursue without ever attaining the formula of 
this Proteus, unlimited by reason, inexpressible 
in language. But there is one foundation which 
no doubt can shake, and in which man will ever 
find a firm ground amidst his uncertainties ; good 
is good and evil is evil. No system is necessary 
to enable us to hate the one and love the other; 
and it is in this sense that faith and love, possess- 
ing no seeming connection with the intellect, are 
the true base of moral certainty, and the only 
means possessed by man of understanding, in 
some slight measure, the problem of his origin 
and destiny.”’ 

Yes: ‘‘le bien, c’est le bien; et le mal, c’est 
Ie mal.” Most true, indeed; but here, and in 
other like utterances, which might be cited, 
especially from M. Renan’s earlier works, we 
must take him to be speaking as a poet. If 
we turn to the critic, we find that this lofty 
teaching crumbles away at the annihilating touch 
of Agnosticism. ‘The morality of the critical 
school,” he tells us, in his Phelosophical Fragments, 
rests, not upon the Categorical Imperative, but 
upon “a sentiment of the nobility of man.” It 
seems a frail foundation whereon to rear the moral 
order. Elsewhere he asserts, ‘“‘le bien et le mal 


100 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [CH. 


se transforment lun dans l’autre.’’ In a famous 
passage of one of his most famous Phalosophecal 
Dialogues, the ripe sage Prospero, in whose words 
we may hear the voice of the Master himself, 
rebukes with mild irony the simple Gotescale who 
aspires to moralize mankind, and seeks to regene- 
rate the masses by the aid of Temperance Societies. 
‘¢ Priver les simples gens de la seule joie qu ils ont, 
en leur promettant un paradis qu’ils n’auront pas!” 
And he goes on to teach his astonished disciple 
that if it is well ever to take the more virtuous 
course, that does not mean that virtue has any 
reality. ‘‘EHlle est une gageure, une satisfaction 
personelle, qu’on peut embrasser comme un géne- 
reux parti: mais la conseiller 4 autrui, qui Dose- 
rait?’’ The same thought finds succinct expression 
in his well-known phrase about ‘‘l’énorme duperie 
quw’implique la bonté.” In his Discourse upon the 
occasion of the reception of M. Cherbuliez into 
the French Academy, he acquainted the world 
that his hesitation regarding the question, ‘‘ Ou 
est le bien?’”’ arose from “the divine parable of 
the Prodigal Son.” ‘Le plus bel enseignement 
du Christianisme,’’ he declares, ‘‘ est que la vertu 
consiste moins dans les ceuvres que dans les senti- 
ments du cour, si bien que l’Kternel a des 
tendresses pour la faute qui vient d’une ardeur 
généreuse ou d’un égarement d’amour.” Remark- 
ing, in passing, upon M. Renan’s ingenuity in 
extracting from the parable of the Prodigal Son 


III. | “THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.” 101 


the doctrine that the Eternal is indulgent towards, 
not the faulty, but their faults, not the sinner, 
but his sins, I go on to note, that he was by no 
means sure how far old-world moralists are well 
founded in accounting moral perfection our true 
end. He tells us in his Souvenirs of his inability 
to rid himself of the idea that perhaps, after all, the 
libertine is right, and practises the true philosophy 
of life. It filled him with melancholy, as indeed 
it well might, when he reflected that it took him 
ten years of profound meditation, and unremitting 
intellectual toil, to reach a conclusion which the 
gamin of Paris attains at one bound.* M. Scherer, 
a warm admirer of M. Renan, seems to me to have 
correctly summed up his friend’s real view of 
ethics. ‘Sa pensée de derriere la téte, c’est que 
la vertu, non plus que toute autre chose ne sup- 
porte l’examen; on souléve le voile et, la comme 
partout, ou découvre qu'il n’y a rien dessous.”’ f 
But whatever may be the real truth about virtue, 
M. Renan held that beauty is just as good, nay, 
better. ‘‘La beauté vaut la vertu,’”’ he declares 
in his Marc-Auréle.{ And in his Souvenirs he 

* «Je n’arrivai pas au point d’émancipation que le gamin 
de Paris atteint sans aucun effort de réflexion, qu’apres 


avoir traversé Gesenius et toute l’exégése allemande. II me 
fallait dix années de méditation et de travail forcené, pour voir 


que mes maitres n’étaient pas infaillibles.””—Souvenirs, p. 15. 
+ Etudes sur la Littérature, vol. viii. p. 127. 
t So also in his Fragments Philosophiques :—“ Un beau senti- 


ment vaut une belle pensée; une belle pensée vaut une belle 
action: une vie de science vaut une vie de vertu.”-—P. 309. 


102 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


goes further: ‘‘ La beauté est un don tellement 
supérieur que le talent, la génie, la vertu méme 
ne sont rien aupres d’elle, en sorte que la femme 
vraiment belle a le droit de tout dédaigner.” M. 
Renan’s practical conclusion is expressed in his 
declaration to the students at the Grand-Véfour, 
‘The old French gaiety is perhaps the profoundest 
of philosophies.” It is the philosophy practised 
by himself in the refined and cultivated form of 
a dilettante epicureanism to which, indeed, he 
found himself inclined by nature: ‘le fond de mon 
caractere est la gaieté et lacceptation résignée du 
sort.” Of the two men who are in him, the 
Gascon—l’homme qui rit—dominated his life after 
he left Saint Sulpice; and he indulged to the 
full his “penchant de trancher beaucoup de diffi- 
cultés par un sourire.” Life, for M. Renan, was 
a comedy, and he thought himself fortunate in 
being provided with a comfortable seat in the 
stalls from which to witness it: ‘“placé au point 
de vue d’une bienveillante ironie universelle.” 
Assuredly it is M. Renan himself who speaks to 
us by the mouth of Ganeo, in the Prétre de Némi : 
‘‘Jouissons, mon pauvre ami, du monde tel qu’il 
sest fait. Ce n’est pas une ceuvre sérieuse: c’est 
une farce, l’ceuvre d’un demiurge jovial. La gaieté 
est la seule théologie de cette grande farce.” The 
French clergy. may possibly be, as M.. Renan 
alleged, ‘“‘respectablement bornés” in their view 
of the universe. But, assuredly, they can hardly . 


LI. | ANOTHER AND A BETTER VOLTAIRE. 103 


be considered wrong in reckoning him among 
those ‘“inimicos crucis Christi, quorum finis in- 
teritus, quorum deus venter est, et gloria in con- 
fusione ipsorum: qui terrena sapiunt.”’ 


Such is the Agnostic teaching with which M. 
Renan interested, amused, fascinated the more 
cultivated minds of his generation, minds which 
turned in loathing from the coarse egoism, the crass 
materialism of modern life; which felt a craving 
for nobler nourishment than that purveyed by 
Atheistic animalism to the vulgar. ‘’'o these 
M. Renan offered his dilettantism, which, at all 
events, recognizes man’s need of a transcendental 
ideal, even if it does not supply one. And his 
dilettantism is precisely of the kind to find favour 
with his more refined countrymen. He has been 
well described as ‘‘the most accomplished of 
’ contributing his part to the great 
human comedy by playing, not lke the more 
vulgar sophists with words, but with the most 
sacred ideas and verities. He interested, amused, 
fascinated his generation, much as Voltaire in- 
terested, amused, fascinated the generation which 
preceded the French Revolution. We may say 
that in him his admiring countrymen had another 
and a better Voltaire; a Voltaire with far less 
esprit indeed, but with far wider culture, and with 


JOUSSEUPS : 


104 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [CH. 


far less sectarian animosity, preaching the same 
word of wisdom—the dictum of the elder sage, 
‘‘ La vie est un enfant qu’il faut bercer jusqu’a ce 
qu’il s’endort,” sums up the life philosophy of 
both—and exhibiting to the end the same inex- 
haustible gaiety— 


‘‘ Toujours un pied dans le cercueil, 
De l’autre faisant des gambades.” 


The very vagueness and indefiniteness of his 
writings, nay the contradictions in them, have, in 
no small degree, contributed to his popularity. 
He was all things to all men. There was in him, 
he telis us, in an amusing passage of his Souvenirs, 
an irresistible impulse to give to every one that 
asked of him, just the answer which he knew 
would be agreeable.* ‘‘ Vous avez raison,” was his 
habitual response in conversation. The truth is 
that his moral philosophy is a thing of shreds and 
patches,t starting from no principles and leading 
to no conclusions. It makes of ethics merely the 
fashion of apprehending life: a matter of taste, 
of sentiment, of artistic sensibility, of wsthetic 
perception. M. Renan’s Critical Agnosticism is 
practically as fatal to Duty, as is the most dogmatic 
Atheism. ‘It is certain,” he tells us, in a signi- 
ficant passage of his Feuilles Détachées, “that 
moral values are losing ground.”’ ‘The day,” he 
* Page 152. 


+ He expressly tells us “ Saisir la physiognomie des choses, 
voila toute la philosophie” (Hragmens Philosophiques, p. 299). 


ui] REVELATION AND NATURAL RELIGION. 105 


thought, ‘‘is fast approaching when organized 
egotism will be installed in the place of charity 
and devotedness.’’ And he knew, no one better, 
that his Agnostic doctrine is powerless to supply 
aremedy. ‘‘Lavertu,” he writes, ‘‘n’a pas besoin 
de la justice des hommes: mais elle ne peut pas 
Se passer d’un témoin céleste qui lui dise, 
Courage, courage! ” * 


M. Renan’s ethical Agnosticism sprung from 
his religious Agnosticism. And of his religious 
Agnosticism he has himself given us the history. 
Like so many others in this age, in unlearning 
Christianity he has unlearned Theism. He illus- 
trates, in a very striking manner, Cardinal New- 
man’s dictum that ‘to deny revelation is the way 
to deny natural religion.” The same habit of 
mind, the same mode of arguing, the same organon 
envestigandi which led him to throw off the faith 
of his fathers, led him, further, to regard the 
existence of God as ‘an unverifiable hypothesis.” 
We have seen, in a previous page, that the reasons 
why he ceased to believe in Christianity were, 
mainly, two: his inability to receive ‘‘ the tradi- 
tional thesis’ regarding the date, authorship, and 
inerrancy of the Sacred Books—Biblia Sacra-— 


* Te Préire de Némi, Act iii. sc. 3. 
+ Grammar of Assent, p. 499 (fifth edition). 


106 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


of Christianity which we call the Bible; * and his 
conviction that miracles never have happened and 
never can happen. Let us examine each of 
these reasons briefly. <A brief examination will, 
I think, suffice. 

Now, with regard to the first of these, I frankly 
admit that if Christianity depended upon a pseudo- 
scientific view of certain venerable documents, 
formed at an unscientific period, and irreconcilable 
with the conclusions of true science, Christianity 
would be doomed. Nor am I in the least disposed 
to shut my eyes to the real significance of what is 
called “the higher criticism ;’’ although I may be 
permitted to observe that much which passes 
current under that name appears to me not high 
criticism, in any sense, but low; in no way divine ; 
not in the least an attempt to assign the final 
cause of the Old or New Testament, or to gauge 
the depth of significance which there is for man- 
kind in the Person of Christ. I suppose that the 
most complete and logical statement of ‘the 
traditional thesis’ is that set forth in the famous 
Swiss Declaration of 1675, which declares the 


* The word “ biblia’’ is properly plural. In the middle ages 
it was transmuted into a singular noun. 

t As to that apprehension of the grand evolution of dogma 
which M. Renan thinks incompatible with a sincere profession 
of the Catholic religion, Imay here remark that it is, in sub- 
stance, the foundation of Cardinal Newman’s Hssay on the 
Development of Religious Doctrine, the orthodoxy of which is 
unquestionable. Ishall have occasion to consider this subject 
further in chap. vii. of the present work. See pp. 314-316. 


11. | THE OLD BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 107 


Hebrew Scriptures to be “inspired, in their con- 
sonants, in their vowels, and in their points, or, 
at least, in the substance of their points; ” and thus 
to constitute, together with the New Testament, 
for which, of course, an equally far-reaching claim 
is made, ‘ the single and uncorrupted rule of faith 
and life.” And such, I imagine, is, or at all events 
was until lately, the orthodox Protestant view. 
It is an astounding thesis. And I candidly confess 
that the disingenuousness—Ihad almost said the in- 
difference to veracity—displayed by some thick and 
thin defenders of the old Biblical exegesis fills me 
with dismay. It suggests to me Bacon’s pregnant 
question, ‘‘ Will ye offer unto the Author of Truth 
the unclean sacrifice of a lie?’’ It appears beyond 
doubt that modern research has shown us much 
which is at variance with ‘the traditional thesis ”’ 
as to the date, authorship, and relative value of the 
Christian Sacred Books, just as it has familiarized 
us with conceptions of the physical universe 
utterly alien to the minds of their writers. And 
I can imagine nothing more fatal to the real 
significance of the venerable text than the Pro- 
crustean torture to which apologists of a certain 
school ruthlessly subject it, in order to make it fit 
with facts recently ascertained by natural, his- 
torical, and critical science. Surely this is a case 
in which, if in any, the dictum applies ‘ Litera 
occidit, spiritus autem vivificat.” I add that to 
suppose Christianity based upon the collection of 


108 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


ancient documents called the Bible is historically 
false. It is certain that no authorized New Testa- 
ment canon existed until the latter half of the 
second century. It is equally certain that the 
mission of the Author of Christianity was not to 
promote the formation of a volume, which, long 
centuries after, should become “the religion of 
Protestants,” but to establish asociety. ‘‘I should 
not receive the sacred Scriptures,” St. Augustine 
declared, ‘‘unless the authority of the Catholic 
Church moved me to do so.” The Bible is, in 
fact, the creation of the Catholic Church, from 
which other varieties of Christianity have received 
it. And the Catholic Church, while declaring it 
in all matters of faith and morals divinely inspired 
throughout, has never pronounced how far that 
inspiration extends—has never formally committed 
herself to ‘‘ the traditional thesis,” which has come 
down from uncritical ages. Cardinal Newman, in 
his most weighty Tractate On the Inspiration of 
Scripture,* lays it down—‘‘ The titles of the 
Canonical books, and their ascription to definite 
authors, either do not come under their inspiration 
or need not be accepted literally:’’ ‘‘nor does it 
matter whether one or two Isaiahs wrote the book 
which bears that prophet’s name; the Church, 
without settling this point, pronounces it inspired 
in respect of faith and morals, both Isaiahs being 
inspired: and if this be assured to us, all other 


* Published in the Nineteenth Century of February, 1884. 


il. | A PERSPECTIVE IN RELIGION. 109 


questions are irrelevant and unnecessary.” * ‘Num- 
quid eget Deus mendacio nostro?” There is noth- 
ing to prevent a sincere Catholic from going to any 
length with modern criticism, which the evidence 
really warrants, in dealing with the letter of our 
Sacred Books. The divine element in those books 
no criticism can touch. The details over which it 
has power are as the small dust in the balance in 
comparison of the idea, over which it is powerless. 
There is a perspective to be observed in religion 
as in painting, otherwise we shall get a Chinese 
world, where things great and small are equally 
important. Surely Mr. Carlyle is right when he 
says: ‘‘The Bible has, in all changes of theory 
about it, this, as its highest distinction, that it is 


* The italics are mine. As a suggestion of mine was the 
immediate occasion of Cardinal Newman’s writing on this subject 
(see his letter to me in the Fortnightly Review of September, 
1890, p. 436), I may be allowed here to state—what is within my 
personal knowledge—that nothing which ever proceeded from 
the pen of my venerated friend was more carefully considered, 
or was given to the world with a deeper sense of responsibility. 
Every word was scrupulously weighed, and the whole was 
submitted to the judgment of most competent theological 
experts before publication. The Cardinal felt fully the gravity 
of the question, which had much engaged his thoughts for 
many years, and was most anxious to indicate, before he was 
called hence, what appeared to him the true mode of dealing 
with it. At the same time, his usual consideration for weak 
brethren led him to employ language of extreme caution, and 
to desire that his friends when discussing, whether in speech 
or writing, what he had advanced, should imitate his example 
in this respect. This will abundantly appear from his letters 
of the year 1884, if his correspondence is given to the world. 


110 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


the truest of books: a book springing, every word 
of it, from the intensest convictions, from the very 
heart’s core, of those who wrote it.” What a 
distinction! entitling the Bible of Christianity— 
at the very least—to a unique place among the 
world’s Sacred Books: justifying us in saying of 
it, what the Hebrew poet said of a small and 
comparatively unimportant portion: “Thy word 
is tried to the uttermost: the righteousness of thy 
testimonies is everlasting.” 

So much may suffice concerning “ the traditional 
thesis,’ which, unfortunately, was such a stone of 
stumbling to M. Renan. As to his peremptory 
declaration that ‘“‘ there never has been a super- 
natural fact,” it would, in good logic be a sufficient 
reply, “‘ Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.” It 
is a question of evidence. M. Renan, in terms, 
acknowledged this, and professed to repudiate the 
a prior, argument.* But, as is clear from many 
passages in his writings, he was, consciously or 
unconsciously, under its influence. It was a first 
principle with him that a supernatural fact—a 
miracle—is impossible, because it would be ab- 
normal: an infraction of the order of the universe: 
a violation of law. But everything depends upon 


* “Ce nest point par un raisonnement a priort que nous 
repoussons le miracle: c’est par un raisonnement critique ou 
historique. Plus on s’éloigne, plus la preuve de un fait sur- 
naturel devient difficile. Pour bien comprendre cela, il faut 
avoir Vhabitude de la critique de textes et de la méthode 
historique.” —Souvenirs, p. 288. 


_~ 


III. | WHAT IS MEANT BY A MIRACLE? 111 


what is meant by “‘norm,”’ “ order of the universe,” 
“law.” I say, deliberately, that the invincible 
prejudice against the miraculous, now so common, 
is merely an expression of that abounding mate- 
rialism which denies the spiritual principle in man 
and in nature, and which, identifying law with 
physical necessity, issues in physical fatalism. 
Again, what is meant by a miracle? ‘Le miracle 
est Pinexpliqué,” M. Renan replies, which is not a 
bad definition, so far as it goes, but it is too brief. 
Coleridge writes— 


“An effect presented to the senses, without any adequate 
antecedent, ejusdem generis, is a miracle, in the philosophical 
sense. Thus the corporeal ponderable hand and arm, raised 
with no other known causative antecedent but a thought, a 
pure act of an immaterial, essentially invisible, imponderable 
will, is a miracle for a reflecting mind. Add the words preter 
experrentiam, and we have a miracle in the popular, practical, 
and appropriated sense.” * 


No doubt this is in some respects extremely 
felicitous ; but it is not sufficiently precise. A far 
more satisfactory account is given by Kant. 


‘Should it be asked, what is to be understood by the word 
miracle, then, since all we are concerned to know is what 
miracles are for us, that is, what they are for the practical use 
of our understanding, we might define them as events in the 
world with the laws of whose working we are, and must always 
remain utterly unacquainted.” t 


ee A Ne eae 
* Interary Remains, vol. iv. p. 276. 


T Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Book 
II. Apot. 2. 


112 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [ cH. 


That such events have occurred, and do occur, 
seems to me absolutely certain. And when I find 
an intelligent man dogmatically asserting that 
they do not occur, I can only suppose that he has 
not looked into the evidence, or that his intellect 
is under the influence of a first principle which 
disenables him for weighing it. In this country, 
especially, the general mind has been much dark- 
ened concerning the supernatural by the attitude 
of popular Protestantism towards it. Relegate 
miracles to the dim antiquity of two thousand 
years ago, and Protestantism will perhaps tole- 
rate them, under conditions. Instance them as 
matters of modern, of contemporary history, and 
Protestantism will explain them away, referring 
them to imposture, or at the best to hallucination. 
The Catholic position in this matter is clearly 
the more consistent. Indeed, Protestants involve 
themselves in a manifest contradiction when they 
admit the miraculous stories in the Old and New 
Testaments, and reject the precisely similar 
legends to be found on every page of ecclesiastical 
history. ‘The Biblical miracles and the ecclesias- 
tical miracles hang together, so to speak ; and, as a 
matter of fact, the prodigies related in the Acta 
Sanctorum are, from the point of view of historical 
criticism, much better established than the like 
occurrences in the Bible. With Catholics it is of 
faith that miracles have never ceased. They 
appertain to the gift of sanctity, which is a 


III. | THAUMATURGY. 113 


“note” of the Church. The truth of particular 
miracles is a question of evidence. And I feel 
bound to say that in some cases which I have 
carefully investigated, the evidence seems to me 
overwhelming. But it may be urged that if such 
events do occur, they are not the product of any 
one religious system. For example, not to go 
further afield, evidence, apparently conclusive, is 
alleged for spiritualistic miracles, in our own day ; 
for, say, the levitation of a Mrs. Guppy; the 
curing of diseases by the application of a handker- 
chief from the body of a Mr. Ashman. The 
answer is that phenomena, apparently miraculous, 
most certainly are not the monopoly of any par- 
ticular religious system. “Talia faciunt magi, 
qualia nonnunquam sancti faciunt,’’ writes St. 
Augustine in his book De Diversis Questionibus.* 
He adds, “ Talia quidem visibiliter esge apparent, 
sed et diverso fine et diverso jure fiunt.” But if 
this be so, it is objected, what becomes of the 
value of miracles as ‘“ credentials ” of Christianity ? 
Well, no doubt it is difficult for the modern mind 


itself, possesses no moral value. It does not 


speak to the conscience. It does not touch the 
heart. No reasonable man would receive Mrs. 


* Questio, 79. 


114 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


Guppy as an ambassadress from the Infinite and 
Eternal, merely because she was levitated, even 
if the testimony to that event should be over- 
whelming. Nor does the fact, if fact it be, that 
handkerchiefs from the body of Mr. Ashman cured 
diseases, invest with authority any utterances which 
that gentleman may make concerning divine things. 
It is, of course, unquestionable that the sphere of 
the miraculous, as vulgarly conceived, is con- 
tracting every day, through our ever-extending 
apprehension of the principle of continuity in the 
phenomenal universe. But why should that blot 
out for us the vision of the Divine Noumenon, 
Maker, Guardian, Worker, Perfecter of all things ? 


““¢ God is law,’ say the wise. O soul! and let us rejoice; 
For if He thunder by law, the thunder is still His voice.” 


‘“‘ Dieu n’agit que par des volontés générales,” says 
Malebranche. But why may not a general 
providence be also a particular providence—that 
is, a miracle? His all-seeing eye discerns the end 
from the beginning, or rather, all to Him is an 
eternal Now. There is astriking passage in Amiel, 
well worthy of being pondered in this connection. 
‘“‘ Le miracle est une perception de lame, la vision du divin 
derriére la nature, une crise psychique analogue 4 celle d’Hnée 
lors du dernier jour d’Ilion qui fait voir les puissances célestes 
donnant |’impulsion aux actions humaines. II] n’y a point de 


miracle pour les indifférents: il n’y a que des dmes religieuses 
capables de reconnaitre le doigt de Dieu dans certains faits.” * 


* Journal Intime, vol. i. p. 75. 


IIL. | “TRRATIONAL” AND “ ABSURD.” 115 


M. Renan constantly speaks of the miraculous 
as “‘irrational” and “absurd.” But ‘irrational ”’ 
means contrary to reason; ‘‘absurd’’ means 
contradictory, impossible. Do we assert that 
which is contrary to reason, or contradictory, or 
impossible, when we say that there are events 
with the laws of whose working we are, and ever 
must remain, unacquainted? Kant well says: 
‘“‘ Sensible people willingly admit in theory that 
miracles are possible; but in the business of life 
they count upon none.” * 

It appears to me, then, that the criticism 
whereon M. Renan founded the Agnosticism of 
which I take him as a typical exponent, is inade- 
quate to support the vast edifice of doubt which he 
reared upon it. I may be permitted to add that 
in treating of questions which involve the spiritual 
life and death of nations, his badinage, however 
charming in itself, is as little in place as was the 


* Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Book 
II. Apot 2. Mr. Mill writes: “ There are few things of which 
we have more frequent experience than of physical facts, which 
our knowledge does not enable us to account for, because they 
depend on “laws” which observation, aided by science, has 
not yet brought to light; and it is always possible that the 
wonderworker may have acquired (consciously or uncon- 
sciously) the power of calling them into action. ... We 
cannot, therefore, conclude absolutely that the miraculous 
theory ought to. be at once rejected. . . . Once admit a God, 
and the production of an effect by his direct volition must be 
reckoned with as a serious possibility.”—Hssays on Religion, 
p. 280. 


116 CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. [CH. II. 


inimitable persiflage of Voltaire. ‘There is pro- 
found truth in Goethe’s dictum, that the mere 
Understanding finds matter for laughter in every- 
thing, the Reason in hardly anything. “Der 
Verstindige findet fast alles lacherlich, der Ver- 
niinftige fast Nichts.” Reason—‘ Vernunft ”»—is 
an endowment in which M. Renan, like Voltaire 
before him, was terribly deficient. And it is pre- 
cisely the quality essential for a just view of those 
supreme problems with which he has so much 
occupied himself. Hence it is that he has, 
practically, left them just where he found them. 
His Critical Agnosticism, in effect, adds nothing 
to the doctrine which Voltaire’s “esprit infini”’ 
taught a century ago. And, to quote certain 
words of his own, written in another connection, 
we may say, ‘‘ Voltaire suffit:’’ one Voltaire is 
enough. 


CHAPTER LY, 
SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. 


Let us now go on to consider that other variety of 
Agnosticism of which I have spoken, the Scientific, 
or Affirmative. And it will be well to view this 
doctrine also, as exhibited by its most effective and 
accredited advocate. Such, I suppose, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer unquestionably is. Professor Huxley has 
recognized in him the most complete and method- 
ical ‘‘expositor of the tendencies of scientific 
thought.” And Mr. Darwin has pronounced him 
“our great philosopher.’’ I must, indeed, be per- 
mitted to say that, while fully recognizing the high 
place held by Mr. Darwin as a diligent, accurate, 
and candid investigator of a certain class of 
physical phenomena, I cannot attach much im- 
portance to his judgment about philosophy and 
philosophers. ‘‘Cuique in arte sua est credendum:” 
and philosophy was not Mr. Darwin’s art. In 
mental science he appears to have been absolutely 
unversed. I question whether he ever so much 
as looked into a metaphysical treatise. His dia- 
lectical powers were extremely feeble. But it is 
unquestionable that the view expressed by him 


118 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


concerning Mr. Herbert Spencer is widely preva- 
lent. And no doubt the reason is, in great part, this: 
that Mr. Spencer’s theory of man and the universe 
is recommended as ‘‘scientific:’’ as a brand-new 
theory formed in independence of the great intel- 
lectual traditions of the human race. Few serious 
students of philosophy, probably, will reckon Mr. 
Spencer among the prophets. But such students 
are rare in England. To the vast majority of 
those who are commonly called “ educated men” 
the very alphabet of metaphysics is unknown. Of 
the experimental sciences they more commonly 
possess some tincture. And the fact that Mr. 
Spencer’s method is essentially physical, is prima 
facie a recommendation to them of his system. 
Professor Max Miiller has well remarked: “It is 
short and easy . . . to be a philosopher, not by 
studying Plato and Aristotle, Berkeley and Kant, 
but by ignoring if not by despising them.” ‘ Such 
a philosophy, by appealing, as it always does, to the 
common sense of mankind, is sure of wide popular 
support.” * ‘*Common sense,’ indeed, is the in- 
dispensable foundation ; but it is by no means suffi- 
cient for these things without a certain intellectual 
discipline. T’o mention one point only: philosophy 
has a terminology of its own: time, space, force, 
motion, mean one thing for the metaphysician and 
another for the physicist. Common sense may, 
however, avail to judge what is the real value of Mr. 


* Science and Thought, p. 145. 


Iv. | A PLEA FOR PLAIN SPEAKING. 119 


Herbert Spencer’s Scientific Agnosticism, as an 
answer to The Great Enigma wherewith we are con- 
cerned in this volume. And so avoiding, as much 
as possible, all technicalities, but holding fast by the 
elementary principles of ratiocination, let us now 
enter upon that inquiry. In conducting it I must 
take leave to use great plainness of speech—even 
at the risk of shocking a coterie of fond enthusiasts, 
who resent as flat blasphemy any questioning of 
Mr. Spencer’s ipse diait: who appear to consider 
it the noblest occupation of a rational creature ‘‘ to 
wonder with a foolish face of praise’’ when their 
Master exhibits ‘‘ the set of visual states which he 
knows as his umbrella,’ moving across “‘the sets 
of visual states which he knows as the shingle and 
the sea.” * I am unfeignedly sorry to be obliged 
to offend these little ones who believe in Mr. 
Spencer. In truth, I may lay claim to some fellow- 
feeling with them. For, if Mr. Spencer will permit 
me to say so, I regard him with much admiration, 
sincere respect, and lively gratitude, profoundly as 
T differ with him. I admire the fertility and sub- 
_ tlety of his intellect, and his singular power of 
generalization. I respect the heroic courage and 
faith unfailing which have sustained him in his 
colossal task: the sober enthusiasm which has led 
him to ‘‘scorn delights and live laborious days,” 
careless of wealth and indifferent to popularity ; 
intent, with noble singleness of purpose, upon the 


* Principles of Psychology, second edition, § 462. 


120 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ cH. 


Severe studies to which he has consecrated his life. 
Iam grateful to him for the abundant light cast 
by his biological knowledge upon many dark places 
of psychology, and still more for exhibiting with a 
power both of analysis and synthesis, not likely to 
be surpassed, a phase of speculation which I must 
account vitiated by radical errors. But to point 
out those errors is a debt which we, who, as we 
consider, follow a more excellent way, owe to our 
day and generation. And the obligation is rendered 
all the more stringent by the fact that Mr. Spencer 
is unquestionably the most influential teacher of 
Scientific Agnosticism. 


Mr. Spencer has bestowed upon his speculations 
the name of “ The Synthetic Philosophy.” The 
adjective might be challenged. From one point 
of view, ‘‘analytical’? would be more accurately 
descriptive. But without dwelling on this point, 
let us proceed to Mr, Spencer’s definition of philo- 
sophy. ‘Science is partly unified knowledge: 
philosophy is completely unified knowledge.” * 
‘‘ Completely unified knowledge!” Well, unques- 
tionably, a philosophy which completely unified 
knowledge, would be a perfect philosophy. We 
may admit that as the ideal. In proportion as it 
approaches such an ideal, a philosophical system is 
great: in other words, in proportion as it satisfies 

* First Principles, fifth edition, § 37. 


pe — ae 


oe ee 


Iv. | “THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.” 121 


the intellect, and increases the limits of knowledge. 
If its principles are objectively true and certain, 
if they are founded in the order of being and eternal 
reality, they can be justified on rational grounds. 
If their root is in the constituent principles of the 
human intellect, the mind will be bound by its own 
intrinsic laws to accept them; they will internally 
cohere; they will be symmetrical, for between all 
speculative truths there is correspondence or 
analogy : “natura sibi ubique consentanea est.”’ All 
philosophy is a search after unity. Hitherto, phi- 
losophers have confessed that only an imperfect 
synthesis rewarded their endeavours. Mr. Spencer 
claims, apparently, to have been completely suc- 
cessful in the quest. ‘‘ Je, d’ou, ot, pour, comment ; 
existence, l’origine, le lieu, la fin et les moyens,”’ 
he can explain it all: faith and morals, the source 
of life, the meaning of life, the end of life and the 
conduct of life. By him, in the fulness of time, the 
answer to The Great Enigma has been discovered ; 
and has been revealed to this favoured nineteenth 
century in the five thousand and odd pages of his 
closely printed volumes. Let us see what it, in 
substance, is. 

The foundation of Mr. Spencer’s philosophy is 
the clear and emphatic distinction drawn in his 
Lirst Principles between the Unknowable and the 
Knowable. The sentiment of a “First Cause, 
infinite and absolute, is, according to Mr. Spencer, 
the eternal and secure basis of all religion. This 


122 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (oH. 


Deity, whom, hidden more or less under anthro- 
pomorphic disguises, the votaries of all creeds 
ignorantly worship, declares he unto them as 
‘The Unknowable.’”’ Next, he bids us turn to 
the physical sciences, taking as our guide ex- 
perience. very persistent impression made upon 
our consciousness, reveals to us an external 
reality, a reaction, a resistance, and, consequently, 
a force. The indecomposable mode of conscious- 
ness is force. All ultimate scientific ideas are 
traceable to experiences of force.* But it is one 
of the most striking discoveries of the nineteenth 
century, that forces are intimately connected, 
are correlated: and this discovery has been largely 
employed by Mr. Spencer in his theory .of the 
universe. He regards all forces as manifestations 
of the dynamic energy everywhere diffused, which 
co-ordinates the whole range of phenomena, past, 
present, and future: an immanent and eternal 
energy, at once active and passive, subject to 
perpetual revolution, and maintaining all things 
in an ever-changing equilibrium. But what is 
this dynamic energy? We know not. Whether 
we analyze what passes within or without our- 
selves, its essence escapes us. Thus the last 
word of physical science, as of religion, is that 
‘“‘the Power which the Universe manifests to us 
is utterly inscrutable.’ + In this ‘“ ultimate 
truth ” of The Unknowable, “ this deepest, widest, 
* Furst Principles, § 15-21. { Ibid. § 14. 


iv |. VIVID” (AND “FAINT” MANIFESTATIONS. i128 


and most certain of all facts,’ is ‘‘the basis of 
[their] reconciliation.””* We can know, then, in 
the strict sense of knowing, only the phenomenal 
manifestations of The Unknowable, and these we 
can know only as purely relative and subjective 
realities. ‘‘HKven the highest achievements of 
science are resolvable into mental relations of 
co-existence and sequence, so co-ordinated as 
exactly to tally with certain relations of co-exist- 
ence and sequence that occur externally.” ft 
These manifestations, ‘‘ called by some impressions 
and ideas,’ Mr. Spencer prefers to distinguish 
as “vivid” and “faint.” “Manifestations that 
occur under the conditions called those of per- 
ception ’?»— Mr. Spencer means sensuous per- 
ception—“‘ are ordinarily far more distinct than 
those which occur under the conditions known 
as those of reflection, or memory, or imagination, 
or ideation.’ { ‘‘ Manifestations of the ‘vivid’ 
order precede, in our experience, those of the 
‘faint’ order.” § ‘‘Those of the one order are 
‘originals,’ while those of the other are copies.” | 
‘“‘What is the meaning of this? What is the 
division equivalent to? Obviously it corresponds 
to the division between object and subject. This 
profoundest of distinctions between the manti- 
festations of The Unknowable, we recognize by 
grouping them into self and non-self. ‘These 
* First Principles, § 14. + Ibid. § 25. * Ibid. § 48. 
§ Ibid. || Ibid. 


) 


124 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH 


faint manifestations, forming a continuous whole, 
differing from the others in the quantity, quality, 
cohesion, and condition of existence of its parts, 
we call the ego: and these vivid manifestations 
indissolubly bound together in relatively immense 
masses, and having independent conditions of 
existence, we call the non-ego; or rather, and - 
more truly, each order of manifestations carries 
with it the irresistible implication of some power 
that manifests itself; and by the words ego and 
non-ego respectively, we mean the power that 
manifests itself in the ‘faint’ forms, and the 
power that manifests itself in the vivid forms.” * 
‘The totality of my consciousness is divisible 
into a faint ageregate which I call my mind; 
a special part of the vivid aggregate cohering 
with this in various ways, which I call my body ; 
and the rest of the vivid aggregate which has no 
such connection with the faint ageregate. This 
special part of the vivid aggregate, which I call 
my body, proves to be a part through which the 
rest of the vivid aggregate works changes in the 
faint, and through which the faint works certain 
changes in the vivid.” + And, ‘the root-concep- 
tion of existence, beyond consciousness, becomes 
that of resistance, plus some force which the 
resistance measures.” { Mr. Spencer’s philosophy 
then requires as “a primordial proposition,” 
* First Principles, § 44. 
t Principles of Psychology, § 462. t Ibid. § 466. 


IV. | “THE UNIFICATION OF SCIENCE.” 125 


as ‘‘a datum,” the acceptance of these two 
separate aggregates, as constituting the world 
of consciousness, and the world beyond conscious- 
ness, and the ascription of both to the action of 
one single cause, which he terms, The Unknow- 
able. Thus is “the unification of science”’ 
“complete,” and ‘‘ philosophy reaches its goal.” * 
That one and the same law everywhere rules, 
applying alike to organic life, to the individual, 
to society, to the life of the earth, to the solar 
system, to the whole of cosmic existence, is a 
postulate essential to Mr. Spencer’s philosophy. 
The law is identical because the life is identical, 
for throughout the universe there energizes a 
Force, ‘‘ indestructible,” ‘‘inscrutable,”’ “‘unknow- 
able,” “absolute,” ‘‘the ultimate of ultimates.” 
Mr. Spencer’s theory may be shortly and accu- 
rately described as an attempt to find the solution 
of the problem of the universe in a sole law: the 
persistence of force under multiform transforma- 
tions. Physical forces, vital forces, mental forces, ~ 
social forces, are all only different manifestations 
of the self-same force. Cosmology, Biology; 
Psychology, Sociology, Ethics—all are to be 
explained by the persistence, under various modi- 
fications, of that manifestation of The Unknowable. 
Nature is merely a vast sphere in which it works 
eternally, bringing to life, bringing to death, inte- 
grating and disintegrating, everywhere throughout 
* First Principles, § 40. 


126 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


what the Buddhists call “the whirlpool of exist- 
ence,” always repeating the same monotonous, 
never-ending process. The history of the minutest 
living organism on earth is precisely the history 
of a world system. Evolution, equilibrium, dis- 
solution—that is the brief epitome of the career, 
whether of a star or of a worm. The phenomena 
of human life, of human history, like the phe- 
homena of astronomy, of geology, of physiology, 
are, in Mr. Spencer’s philosophy, nothing but 
metamorphoses of the one dynamic principle at 
different stages of intensity, infinitely varied com- 
binations of the same elements. Such, sketched 
in the roughest outlines, is the vast philcsophical 
edifice which this bold and patient thinker hag 
reared. What place therein has the race of man ? 
It is an insignificant factor in the sum of things, 
produced, and, in brief time, to be destroyed by 
the never-ceasing action of eternal forces. <A 
recent German writer has well put it: “ What, in 
Mr. Spencer’s philosophy, is universal life? <A 
succession of beings and of forms expressing the 
combinations of the same elementary phenomena 
in a determinate order. What is each individual 
life? An insignificant moment in the infinite 
varieties of movement. What is humanity? A 
collection of those moments. Individual] life, all 
history, are but imperceptible episodes in the 
immense, eternal work of Nature: accidents with- 
out future and without meaning, infinitesimal 


IV. | THE ONLY ETERNAL. 127 


quantities which the thinker may neglect, in the 
universal and infinite processus.’ This is the 
answer which the most popular school of modern 
philosophy gives to the question, ‘‘ What is man?” 
His personality is an illusion. His immortality 
is a dream. The race will perish like the in- 
dividual. The earth itself will perish when the 
sun which vivifies it becomes extinct. Death will 
assert its reign over the immensity of the world 
systems which people space. True, the elementary 
forces which constitute the present order of things 
will enter into other combinations. Force is 
eternal, and the only eternal. New universes, 
peopled by new forms of being, will come into 
existence, and will in their time disappear. But 
what is that to me? To me, in the presence of 
this overwhelming vision, the words of Pascal 
come home with even more appalling meaning 
than they could have borne for him: ‘“ Lost in 
this little corner of the universe,’ ‘‘ plunged in 
the abyss of those terrible spaces which encompass 
me,” “I am affrighted like a man who, in his 
sleep, has been carried to some horrible desert 
island, and there awakes, not knowing where he 
is, nor how he shall escape.” How he shall 
escape? No: there is no escape. 


Now, what are we to say to Mr. Spencer's 


128 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


gigantic hypothesis? Well, in the first place, I 
may observe that, notwithstanding its air of 
novelty, it 1s a very ancient hypothesis so far as 
its root idea is concerned. It is substantially the 
old atomistic theory of self-existent matter, fixed 
in quantity, indestructible, itself producing all its 
changes through the antagonistic forces whereof 
it is composed. I am far from imputing this 
antiquity as a fault. Iam as far from questioning 
Mr. Spencer’s claim to originality. It has been 
observed by Goethe that the most original authors 
of this new time are those who have the power 
of presenting what has been said before as though 
it had not been said. And certainly in Mr. 
Spencer’s hands the theory of Democritus has 
assumed quite a fresh aspect; so marvellous is 
the industry with which he has collected his facts 
from all departments of the experimental sciences ; 
so singular the ingenuity with which he has syste- 
matized them ; so consummate the art with which 
he has employed ‘‘the loose abundance of his 
phraseology” to veil the gaps in his argument. 
Mr. Spencer’s philosophy is, in fact, a vast system 
of speculative physics. Even his account of the 
operations of the human consciousness is given in 
language derived from matter and motion. He ap- 
peals to what itis the fashion to call ‘‘experience.”’ 
Does ‘‘experience’’ bear him out? His meta- 
physic is mechanical, his psychology is biological. 
We may reasonably ask from him the kind of 


Iv. | THE UNITY OF NATURAL FORCES. 129 


proof which mechanists and biologists offer. There 
are three fundamental doctrines upon which his 
vast edifice rests. If they fail, the whole super- 
structure falls of necessity into the abysses of 
time and being above which he has sought to rear 
it. J mean his doctrines of Causation, of the 
Relativity of Knowledge, and of The Unknowable. 
Let us examine each a little in detail; and it will 
be most convenient to take them in this order. 


First, then, what warrant has Mr. Spencer for 
identifying all the facts of physical and mental 
causation ? Why, even the unity of natural forces 
is by no means established, very atom is sub- 
ject to the action of at least six powers—gravity, 
chemic attraction, chemic repulsion, polarity, 
cohesion, elasticity—which are irreducible to one 
another. Nay, chemistry reckons some seventy 
simple bodies, of which sixteen form the ultimate 
elements of the human organism, and each of 
these sixteen—probably each of the seventy— 
would seem to have its own proper causative 
power. ‘‘Force,’” says Dubois-Reymond, “is. 
nothing else than an abortion of the irresistible 
tendency to personification.” ‘Tio which we may 
add that Mr. Spencer’s great sole law of the Per- 
sistence of Force is nothing else than an illegiti- 
mate corollary from the unquestionable fact of 

K 


130 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


the conservation of energy. The experimental 
sciences offer no warrant for his assertion that 
“the quantity of force always remains the same.” 
The doctrine of the persistence and indestructi- 
bility of Force as taught by him is an amaloam 
of physical dogmatism and metaphysical error. 
The existence of a prima materies is as unproved 
now as in the days of Berkeley. There is no real 
oneness known in matter. We can by no means 
affirm the existence of one primordial physical 
substance: of one ultimate physical cause. The 
utmost we can assert is that the ponderable sub- 
stances are subject to the same laws. Still less 
are we warranted in affirming that what Mr. 
Spencer calls, in his question-begging* phraseology, 
“the vivid aggregates” and ‘the faint agere- 
gates*’ are the outcome of the same dynamic 
energy. Mr. Spencer’s “vivid aggregates” are 
experiences of sensation. His “ faint aggregates” 
are remembered experiences of sensation. Mr. 
Spencer does not, of course, say that life is merely 
motion. He knows that it is more than that. 
Still, if there is any meaning in words, his object 


“ “Question-begging,” and something more indeed. Pro- 
fessor Green has well pointed out, “It is only by a misuse of 
terms, according to Mr. Spencer’s own showing, that this vivid 
aggregate is called an aggregate at all. The ‘states of con- 
sciousness, which form it,’ have none of them any permanence. 
Hach ‘ changes from instant to instant.’ To speak of such states 
as ‘aggregating’ or as ‘segregating themselves’ is a contradic- 
tion in terms.” — Works, vol. i. p. 393. 


IV. | CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 131 


is to find the origin of consciousness in the nervous 
system ;* to represent thoughts as generated t from 
things; to establish the identity of intellectual 
concepts and material impressions; to exhibit 
mind as the outcome of the association of sen- 
sations. But Mr. Spencer’s postulate is open to 
two fatal objections. In the first place, his doc- 
trine that ideas are only “copies,” and ‘ faint 
copies,” of past experience, personal and racial, 
is untenable. His confusion of psychical with 
physiological facts, of consciousness with the pheno- 
mena of sense, is contrary to observation, which 


* “These separate impressions are received by the senses... 
[and are] all brought into relation with one another. .. . But 
this implies some centre of communication common to them all, 
through which they severally pass, and as they cannot pass 
through it simultaneously they must pass through it in succes- 
sion. So that as the external phenomena responded to become 
greater in number, and more complicated in kind, the variety 
and rapidity of the changes to which this common centre of 
communication is subject, must increase—there must arise an 
unbroken series of these changes—there must arise a conscious- 
ness.” —Principles of Psychology, § 179. 

+ Iam well aware that Mr. Spencer prefers to speak of co- 
ordination. But Professor Green has shown, with unanswerable 
logic, ‘On the strength of the admitted determination of sub- 
ject by object—the converse determination being ignored—_ 
things are supposed [by Mr. Spencer] to produce the intelligence 
which is the condition of their appearance. Through qualities 
and ¢ombining consciousness, and through the ‘registration ’ 
of these in the sentient organism, they are supposed gradually 
to generate those forms of synthesis without which in fact they 
themselves would not be.”—Works, vol. i. p. 388. 


132 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. LOH, 


testifies that ideas and impressions differ not in 
degree but in kind. Of what concrete or physical 
things, made known to us by sensation, can 
abstract thoughts be the copy?* Secondly, Mr. 
Spencer has absolutely failed to show that ‘the 
law of metamorphosis which holds among the 
physical forces holds equally between the mental 
forces;”’ that ‘‘ those modes of the Unknowable 
which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity 
are alike transformable into each other and into 
those modes of the Unknowable which we dis- 
tinguish as sensation, emotion, thought — these, 
in their turn, being directly or indirectly trans- 
formable into their original shapes : ” ¢ that life and 
intellectual energy may be brought under his great 
formula of the persistence of force. What is his 
argument? It amounts to this: that mental 
action is contingent upon the presence of a certain 
nervous apparatus, the activity of which again 
depends upon a particular chemical constitution: 
that the evolution of thought and emotion varies 
with the supply of blood to the brain, and with 
the condition of the blood: and that the effete 


* Take an illustration from St. Augustine: “An vero cum 
audio tria genera esse questionum, an sit, quid sit, quale sit; 
sonorum quidem quibus hec verba confecta sunt imagines teneo, 
et eos per aures cum strepitu transisse ac jam non esse scio. 
Res vero ipsas que illis significantur sonis, neque ullo corporis 
sensu corporis attigi, neque uspiam vidi preter animum meum.”’ 
— Confess. ]. x. c. 10. 

+ First Principles, § 71. 


Iv. | “ PROOFS.” 133 


products separated from the blood by the kidneys, 
vary in character with the amount of cerebral 
action.* Such are Mr. Spencer’s “ proofs ”’ of the 
correlation of mental and physical forces. Proofs! 
He does not take us within measurable distance 
of proof. Who doubts that ‘the proportion of 
phosphorus, present in the brain, is the smallest 
in infancy, old age, and idiotcy, and the greatest 
during the prime of life?’’+ or that “tea and 
coffee create gentle exhilaration?’ { or—if I may 
present him with a still more striking illustration 
—that a pinch of snuff clarifies the intellect? 
The concomitancy, the parallelism between mate- 
rial and mental changes is constant, perhaps in- 
variable. But Mr. Spencer is as well aware as I 
“am, that of the connection between physical motion 
and psychical change, between the brain and 
thought, between neurosis and psychosis, we really 
know nothing. We are almost entirely ignorant 
of cerebral physiology. Recent discoveries may 
have traced the nerve fibres of sensation and 
motion a little further towards the circumference 
of the brain; but they have entirely failed to 
reveal to us the properties of the caudate nerve- 
cells, of the cerebral conyolutions. Mr. Spencer, 

* First Principles, § 71. It is, of course, impossible for me 
to reproduce the whole of this chapter, which should be care- 
fully read in order to appreciate the strength—or weakness— 


of Mr. Spencer’s argument. I have referred to what appears 
to be the culminating portion of it. 


+ Ibid. t Ibid. 


134 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


indeed, admits that “how a force existing as 
motion, heat, or light can become a mode of con- 
sciousness, how it is possible for aérial vibrations 
to generate the sensation which we call sound, or 
for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the 
_ brain to give rise to emotion—these are mysteries 
__which it is impossible to fathom.” * He pleads, 
i however, that they are not profounder mysteries 
than the transformation of certain physical forces 
into each other. But it is not a question of the 
relative profundity of mysteries. We know that 
certain forces of the material world—light, heat, 
magnetism, electricity—are convertible into one 
another, and that all appear to be subject to the 
laws of conservation of energy. But there 1s No 
known process of changing ponderable into im- 
ponderable substances. Light is not a gas: it is 
but a mode of motion. And no gas, however 
attenuated or expanded, turns into light. This 
is certain, as every schoolboy knows. Equally 
certain is it that the transformation of a physical 
force into mental energy is a mere nude hypothesis. 
There is not a shred of direct evidence to support 
it, Nor can I admit the validity of the analog oy 
upon which Mr. Spencer relies. In the pheno- 
mena of the material world the production and 
succession of movements take place according to 
invariable rules. It is age true that here, 
too, we do not know the how of the causal nexus. 
* First Principles, § 71. 


Iv. | “AN OVERWHELMING BIAS.” 135 


Still, we can, at all events, follow the various 
phases of the metamorphosis and ascertain the 
order of antecedents and consequents. Lar other 
is it in the sphere of vital force. Here there is 
mechanism, indeed: but there is something more ; 
there is spontaneity, there 1s consciousness : 

‘apparent dire facies.” In the invisible world of 
intellect, of spirit, which is properly the domain 
of the metaphysician, the analogy disappears alto- 
gether. Professor Bain admits the ‘‘total difference 
of nature’’ between ‘the two extreme and con- 
trasted facts termed Mind and Matter.” * ‘here 
is simply no measurable relation between the 
intellectual effect and the physical fact alleged 
as the efficient cause; between—let us say—the 
vibration of atoms and hide of gratitude ; between 
fhe compounding of molecules and the setvesitien 
of verses. Mr. Spencer is of opinion that ‘‘ nothing 
can explain the non-acceptance”’ of his doctrine 
except ‘“‘an overwhelming bias in favour of a pre- 
conceived theory.” + But in truth nothing save 
an overwhelming bias in favour of Mr. Spencer’s 
theory can explain its acceptance. The burden 
of proving it lies upon him. And he has no proot 
to offer. In fact, the sole ground why he calls 
upon us to receive it—under pain, as 1b were, of 
intellectual reprobation—is that his philosophy 
cannot get on without it. That is true enough. 
But it is hardly a sufficient argument why we 

* Mind and Body, p. 134. + First Principles, § 73. 


136 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


should subordinate reason to faith, and accept 
descriptions as though they were explanations. _ 

~ Before I go further, I should like to say one word 
more on this question of the unity of natural forces, 
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that all the 
phenomena known as affinities, or elective attrac- 
tions, could be reduced to the merely mechanical 
action of molecules. Well, even then, although 
in these complex phenomena there were no other 
elementary principles than mechanical forces, they 
would still constitute real properties, verifiable by 
experience. The composition of elementary prin- 
ciples in the world of living beings exhibits not 
merely simple collocation, but organic arrange- 
ment. Vitality, or a vital principle, is indeed, as 
we all know, peremptorily banished by authorita- 
tive persons to the limbo where repose aquosity 
and other discredited ‘metaphysical entities.” 
There are, however, savants—Clande Bernard was 
one of them—who declare that a creative and 
directive idea (wne idée créatrice et directive) governs 
the formation of the organs. Nor is there any 
immediate prospect of the extinction of this school 
by the doctrine which explains every organism, 
all life, all thought, by the simple play of cellular 
activities. Let us, however, go a step further in 
our hypothetical concession. Let us suppose that 
this view were incontestably established. Even 
then we should be far from the identification of 
the vital properties of bodies with their chemical 


Iv. | THOUGHT AND MOTION. 137 


or physical properties; very far indeed from the 
identification of thought with motion. Let me 


here borrow some pregnant observations from 
Mr. Romanes :— 


‘“ Suppose that physiologists should discover a mechanical 
equivalent of thought, so that we might estimate the value of 
a calculation in thermal units, or the ‘labour of love’ in foot- 
pounds: still . .. we should have only cut a twist of flax to 
find a lock of iron. For by thus assimilating thought with 
energy, we should in nowise have explained the fundamental 
antithesis between subject and object. The fact would remain, 
aif possible, more unaccountable than ever that mind should 
present absolutely no point of real analogy with motion. In- 
volved with the essential idea of motion is the idea of extension : 
suppress the latter and the former must necessarily vanish ; for 
motion only means transition in space of something itself 
extended. But thought, as far as we can possibly know it, is 
known and distinguished by the very peculiarity of not having 
extension. Therefore, even if we were to find a mechanical 
equivalent of thought, thought would still not be proved a mode 
of motion. On the contrary, what would be proved would be 
that, in becoming transformed into thought, energy had ceased 
to be energy: in passing out of its relation to space it would 
cease to exist as energy. . . . Therefore, the proof that thought 
has a mechanical equivalent would simply amount to the proof, 
not that thought is energy, but that thought destroys energy. 
_.. We may, therefore, quit the suggestion that the difficulty 
experienced by Materialism of showing an equivalency between 
neurosis and psychosis can ever be met by assuming that some 
day mental processes may admit of being expressed in terms of 
physical.” * 


I venture to hold, then, that Mr. Spencer has 
no sufficient warrant for identifying all the facts 


* “The Fallacy of Materialism:” Nineteenth Century, 
December, 1882, p. 877. 


138 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


of physical and mental causation: that his theory 
of the transformation and equivalence of all forces 
is not reasoned truth, but unproved theory ; that 
his “ultimate of ultimates”’ ig as purely hypo- 
thetical as the “chimera bombinans in vacuo,” 
popularly supposed to be so dear to the medieval 
schoolmen. 


Let us go on to the next postulate of Mr. 
Spencer’s philosophy: his doctrine of the Rela- 
tivity of Knowledge. I say advisedly his doctrine, 
because there is a doctrine of the relativity of 
knowledge with which I have -no quarrel, and 
which is by no means his. It is perfectly true 
that our knowledge is relative to our mental con- 
stitution ; “ quidquid recipitur secundum modum 
recipientis recipitur.’’ We cannot know things ol 
they are in themselves; we can know them only 
as they appear to our consciousness and are con-| 
- ditioned by our intellect. And this relative know- 
ledge is imperfect: because to know anything 
perfectly we must know it in its connection with 
everything : ‘‘ Denn jede Strasse fiihrt ans End der 
Welt.”’ Absolute knowledge is possible only to the 
Absolute Being. Again, I am quite prepared to 
admit that mind and matter both proceed from an 
Infinite Substance, and that knowledge is founded 
on the discovery by the human intellect of their 


rv.) RELATIVITY. 139 


relations. But when Mr. Spencer teaches the 
relativity of our knowledge, he means something 
very different from this. I will show, in his own 
words, what it is that he means :— 


‘“‘ Tf,” he insists, ‘‘ Life, in all its manifestations, inclusive of 
Intelligence in its highest form, consists in the continuous 
adjustment of internal relations to external relations, the neces- 
sarily relative character of our knowledge becomes obvious. 
The simplest cognition being the establishment of some con- 
nection between subjective states answering to some connection * 
between objective agencies . . . it is clear that the process, no 
matter how far it be carried, can never bring within the reach 
of Intelligence either the states themselves or the agencies 
themselves.” + ‘The general truth... is that though internal 
feeling habitually depends on external agents, yet there is no 
likeness between them, either in kind or in degree. The con- 
nection between objective cause and subjective effect is condi- 
tioned in ways extremely complex and variable. . . . The 
relation between outer agent and inner feeling generated by it 
depends on the structure of the species.— . . . Weare brought | 
to the conclusion that what we are conscious of as properties of | 
matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective | 
affections produced by objective agencies that are unknown and un- | 
knowable.” § 


These last words contain the gist of Mr. Spencer’s 
doctrine of the relativity of our knowledge. He 
does not deny that the external world exists. On 
the contrary, he strenuously combats that denial. 
But he insists that we can know nothing of it 
beyond the impressions produced by its states 


* “Some connection”! But the whole question is—What 
connection ? 

+ First Principles, § 25. + Principles of Pyschology, § 78. 

§ Ibid. § 86. The italics are mine. 


140 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


upon our states of consciousness. From our sense 
perceptions, which are but subjective modifications 
of something unknown, we draw certain inferences 
regarding it: its weight, for example, or its resist- 
ance. And that is all the knowledge of it to which 
we can attain: a knowledge of relations between 
relations. Ultimate scientific ideas, he maintains, 
“turn out to be merely symbols of the actual, not 
cognitions of it.” * Is this a valid doctrine ? 

Now, in the first place, we must of course admit 
that all our knowledge of the external world is 
gained through the senses: there is no other 
channel. But does it follow from this that all our 
knowledge is merely sensation ?—an inference from 
our sense perceptions? An inference! But that 
supposes a process of ratiocination. And surely, 
as a matter of fact, it is not by any such process 
that our first knowledge of external objects is 
gained. Consciousness itself testifies that there 
is in the mind a power to cognize external objects 
immediately and intuitively. It is the experience 
of every child as he— : 


‘“‘—— learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘ me,’ 


And finds ‘I am not what I see, 
And other than the things I touch.’ ” 


The distinction between subject and object is, 
I say, a primitive fact, or rule of consciousness, 
and to recognize it is a condition of all sound 
thinking. And perception is a much more delicate 


* First Principles, § 21. 


v.] PERCEPTION. 141 


and subtle matter than Mr. Spencer imagines. 
The images presented to our intelligence by the 
eye, the ear, the touch—Aristotle and the school- 
men after him called them phantasmata—are the 
direct results of sensuous experience. But know- 
ledge means something more than that. We may 
so on—we do go on—to the reflex act of subject- 
ing those phantasmata to the judging faculty; we 
reason about them; we compare, we abstract. 
Passive sensation does not constitute knowledge 
in the true sense. The instrument of knowledge 
is thought (quo cognosciumus). Knowledge (quod 
cognoscitur) is what is gained by thought. There 
is a perception of sense, which is concerned with 
the material, the extended, the corporeal. ‘There 
is an analytical interpretation of that perception, 
an intellectual appropriation of it (das Bewusst- 
werden) which has to do with the immaterial, the 
unextended, the uncorporeal. Mr. Spencer con- 
fuses the two. I should like to make this evident, 
if I can, to the “‘ general reader:” and really, if 
we put aside sophisms and sophistications, there 
is no great difficulty in picturing to ourselves 
the intellect at its actual contact with the pre- 
sentments of sense. I take into my hands a stone. 
I am directly conscious of it as an otherness: a 
non-self. Feeling proper, sensation, reveals to me 
so much. And I proceed—this is the next step— 
to interpret the sensation intellectually, to cognize 
the stone as hard and heavy. ‘Thus does the 


142 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (cH. 


thinking subject respond to the stimulating object, 
and ‘‘ convert the feeling into a felt thing.” Here 
is something more than sensation: here is an 
interior expression of sensation, formulated in 
words: here is intellection. Surely so much is 
clear. But we may advance yet a step further. 
From the cognition of the stone as hard and heavy, 
we may by comparison, reasoning, abstraction, 
advance to the general concepts of hardness and 
weight. These are the three steps in our know- 
ledge which Kant distinguishes as Experience, 
Understanding, and Reason; and which, under 
whatever names, are commonly admitted by meta- 
physicians. It is perfectly true that the weight 
and resistance of which I am conscious, are ‘‘ sub- 
jective affections.”’ It is not true that they are 
but subjective affections. What is in the intellect, 
Aristotle observes, is not the stone but the idea 
of the stone: od yap 6 difos ev TH Wyn, adda 7d 
eldos. But the idea of weight, the idea of resist- 
ance, has an objective value. The knowledge 
which the intellect obtains concerning its various 
objects is not wholly relative. 

‘“The relativity of our knowledge.” There is 
one thing which Mr. Spencer quite ignores in all 
that he has written upon this theme. And that 
is that the relations of things are rational. But to 
say this is to say that those relations possess an 
element of objectivity. Mr. Spencer excludes the 
rational element from knowledge. He makes of 


IV. | “DAS GEISTIGE BAND.” 143 


it merely sensuous experience, compared and syn- 
thesized. For him, ideas are merely general 
abstract relations between phenomena. For him, 
our intellectual horizon is bounded by the experi- 
mental sciences. His method appears to me te 
be exactly described in the well-known verses of 
Faust :— 


** Wer will was Lebendig’s erkennen und beschreiben, 
Sucht erst den Geist herauszutreiben ; 
Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand, 
Fehlt, leider! nur das geistige Band.” 


2) 


“Das geistige Band: the spiritual nexus. 
Yes. That is exactly what is wanting in Mr. 
Spencer’s philosophy. His synthesis is merely an 
attempt to generalize the physical sciences: an 
attempt not judged by the chief masters of those 
sciences especially successful. It is not rational, 
intellectual, spiritual. And that is its condemna- 
tion. You will never succeed in explaining man 
and the universe by what is lowest in man and 
the universe. The physical sciences will never 
reveal to you the highest form of universal truth. 
We possess faculties of intuition, of intellection, 
of sense. Mr. Spencer does not recognize intul- 
tion. And intellection he confounds with sensa- 
tion. He seeks to know mind through matter. 
Leibnitz truly observes, ‘‘It is only by what is 
within us that we have any knowledge of what 
is outside.” The right starting-point in. philo- 
sophy is in the natural operations of the intellect. 


144 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


In the happy words of Coleridge, ‘‘ Metaphysics 
are the science which determines what can and 
cannot be known of being and the laws of being 
a priori—that is, from those necessities of the 
mind, or laws of being, which though first revealed 
to us by experience, must yet have pre-existed, in 
order to make experience itself possible; even as 
the eye must exist previously to any particular act 
of seeing, though only by sight can we know that 
we have eyes.’”’* ‘The object of the intellect is being 
or truth—ens vel verum commune—Aquinas tells us. 
This idea of being is the root of all our knowledge. 
Nothing is known save as being. And things are 
cognizable so far as they participate in being. To 
this, language itself witnesses, for there is, in strict- 
ness, only one verb: the verb to be. By all means 
let us recognize the category of Becoming. But 
let us not overlook, with Mr. Spencer, the equally 
real category of Being. ‘Things are related. True. 
But Mr. Spencer might have learnt from “ the 
old hermit of Prague, who never saw pen and ink, 
‘That that is, is.’”” Yes. Things are. They have 
their separate identity. ‘‘ Things are what they 
are.”’ ‘They have their own nature. The princi- 
pium individuatioms of the schoolmen is a fact: 
an ultimate fact: that is a mystery. ‘‘Omne indi- 
viduum ineffabile.”’ ‘One can only understand 
what one can make,” Aristotle warns us. ‘‘ Stay,”’ 
says the Alchemist to his weeping wife, in Balzac’s 
* The Friend, vol. i. p. 253 (Pickering’s Edition). 


Iv. | BEING AND BECOMING. 145 


powerful novel: ‘‘ Stay: I have decomposed tears. 
Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, some 
chloride of soda, some mucus, and some water.” 
Is that all that a tear is? ‘‘Life,’’ according to 
Mr. Spencer, “‘is adequately conceived only when 
we think of it as the continuous adjustment of 
internal relations to external relations.” * Is life 
really no more than that? Does this decomposi- 
tion explain the living man? How is it that I 
know aught external at all? Without the one- 
ness, continuity, and identity of the thinking 
subject it would be impossible to unite the ele- 
ments of sensible knowledge: ‘‘to grasp together 
the manifold of intuition into the unity of appre- 
hension;’’ as Kant speaks. ‘he very condition 
of knowledge is the simplicity and persistence of 
the ego. Being is a primitive intuition of the 
intellect, lying at the basis of each act of cogni- 
tion, and it is formulated by us under the affirma- 
tion, “Iam I.”+ The conscious ego reveals self 
and non-self as entities: as objective realities. 


We go on from Mr. Spencer's theory of Know- 
ledge to his doctrine of The Unknowable. 


* Principles of Psychology, § 131. 

+ Mr. Spencer admits that “no hypothesis enables us to 
escape ” from “ the belief in the reality of self” (L’rst Principles, 
§ 20), although elsewhere he assures us that personality is a 
fiction. 

L 


146 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


It is an old saying, and a true, that the various 
questions with which philosophy is occupied are 
summed up and concentrated in one: the question 
of the Infinite. Mr. Spencer shall himself state 
his teaching on this high matter :— 


“ We are conscious of the Relative as existence under con- 
ditions and limits; it is impossible that these conditions and 
limits can be thought of apart from something to which they 
give the form: the abstraction of these conditions and limits is, 
by the hypothesis, the abstraction of them only ; consequently 
there must be a residuary consciousness of something which 
filled up their outlines; and this indefinite something consti- 
tutes our consciousness of the Non-relative or Absolute. Impos- 
sible though it is to give this consciousness any qualitative or 
quantitative expression whatever, it is not the less certain that 
it remains with us asa positive and indestructible element of 
thought.” * ‘Though the Absolute cannot in any manner or 
degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find 
that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness: 
that, so long as consciousness continues, we cannot for an 
instant rid ourselves of this datum: and that thus the belief 
which this datum constitutes, has a higher warrant than any 
other whatever.” + ‘‘It is alike our highest wisdom and our 
highest duty to regard that through which all things exist, as 
The Unknowable.”’ { 


This is Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of the Absolute ; 
and here, as it is sometimes said, is the differenti- 
ation of his philosophy from Materialism proper. 
Certainly he does not teach that external pheno- 
mena, Kraft wnd Stoff, are what they seem: that 
Matter as we know it, or Motion as we know it, 
is the thing-in-itself. On the contrary, he ex- 


* First Principles, § 26. t. Ibid. § 27. + Ibid. § 31. 


Iv.] MENTAL AND PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 147 


pressly tells us that ‘‘ Matter and Motion, as we 
think them, are but symbolic of unknowable forms 
of existence:’’ that ‘‘ Mind also is unknowable,” 
and that ‘‘ were we compelled to choose between 
the alternatives of translating mental phenomena 
into physical phenomena, or of translating physical 
phenomena into mental phenomena, the latter 
alternative would seem the more acceptable of 
the two.’?* Nay, more, that ‘‘it is impossible to 
interpret inner existence in terms of outer exist- 
ence.’ + Elsewhere, however, Mr. Spencer en- 
deavours to accomplish this impossibility. Thus, 
to cite one instance only—not the strongest, but 
the most singular—he tells us: ‘‘ We have good 
reason to conclude that, at the particular place in 
a superior nervous centre, where, in some mys- 
terious way, an objective change or nervous action 
causes a subjective change or feeling, there exists 
a quantitative equivalence between the two: y Pahe 
“good reason,” apparently, being that ‘‘ nerve 
centres disintegrated by action are perpetually 
re-integrating themselves, and again becoming fit 
for action.” This “ good reason,’ I must take 
leave to say, appears to me ‘exceeding good 
senseless.’’ Mr. Spencer does not seem to possess 
even a rudimentary knowledge of the value of 
evidence and the nature of proof. Moreover, “a 
quantitative equivalence!”’ All physical pheno- 


* Principles of Psychology, § 63. { Ibid. 
t Ibid. § 47. The italics are mine. 


148 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


mena, of course, can be expressed in terms of 
quantity. But what has quantity to do with feel- 
ing? This by the way. What I am, at the 
present moment, concerned to point out is that 
Mr. Spencer certainly does seek to interpret 
thought and feeling as manifestations of force. 
He tells us expressly that mind is ‘‘ composed of feel- 
ings and the relations between feelings.” * ‘‘ They 
are the materials out of which ... . Intellect is 
evolved by structural combination.’ 7 But his 
‘feeling’? is in truth mere sensation. And thus 
we pass ‘‘ without break, from the phenomena of 
bodily life to the phenomena of mental life.” f 
‘‘Tt is inferable that all physical relations what- 
ever, from the necessary to fortuitous, vesult from 
the experiences of the corresponding external re- 
lations.” § Mr. Spencer teaches, over and over 
again, that thought and feeling can be interpreted 
only as manifestations of force. But matter and 
motion also are ‘‘ differently conditioned manifes- 
tations of force.” Whence it would seem that 
mind and matter are identical. But what is this 
force in the metamorphoses of which we have the 
explanation of the wondrous All? Mr. Spencer’s 
doctrine concerning it is not consistent. He 
regards it as “a relative reality.” Body and 
mind for Mr. Spencer are both relative realities. 
‘Feeling and nervous action are the inner and 


* Principles of Psychology, § 77. t Ibid. § 76. 
t Id Sask. § Ibid. § 189. The italics are mine. 


Iv. | DISCORDANT ORACLES. 149 


outer faces of the same change.’* ‘They are 
“the subjective and objective faces of the same 
thing,” but we are ‘utterly incapable of seeing, 
and even of imagining, how the two are related.” t 
In the Unknowable Ultimate Reality the two 
modes of being are one. Dualism has only a 
relative and phenomenal value. But, on the 
other hand, ‘‘ the current belief in objects as ex- 
ternal independent entities has a higher guarantee 
than any other belief whatever: our cognition of 
existence, considered as noumenal, has a certainty 
which no cognition of existence, considered as 
phenomenal, can ever approach.’ { I do not 
attempt to harmonize these discordant oracles. 
And I should much like to see the man who can 
harmonize them. But I do not hesitate to affirm 
that the very nature of intelligence forbids such 
a conception of the Absolute as that which Mr. 
Spencer presents to us under the name of The 
Unknowable. ‘‘ What must we say,’ he asks, 
‘concerning that which transcends knowledge ?’’§ 
What indeed! All knowledge, according to Mr. 
Spencer, is relative. It is rigidly restricted to phe- 
nomena. “Thinking being relationing,” he tells 
us in a well-known passage, ‘‘no thought can ever 
express more than relations.” | If this is so, if our 
knowledge is limited to conditioned experience, we 


* Principles of Psychology, § 51. The italics are mine. 
{ Ibid. § 56. + Ibid. § 448. 
§ First Principles, § 26. || Ibid. § 25. 


150 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


cannot possibly know, in any sense of knowing, the 
unconditioned. But Mr. Spencer tells us, that 
‘‘besides our consciousness of phenomena, we have 
a vague consciousness of that which transcends 
distinct consciousness.” * ‘‘ Vague” consciousness, 
and ‘‘ distinct”? consciousness! What virtue is 
there in the adjectives? All consciousness, 
according to Mr. Spencer, is constituted under 
forms and limits: it belongs to the order of pheno- 
mena. That is for him the one mode of conscious- 
ness. If you abolish the limits, you abolish the 
consciousness. If, as Mr. Spencer insists, our 
experience is only conditioned, assuredly we are 
not justified in asserting an unconditioned existence 
in any form, conceivable or inconceivable. Mr. 
Spencer himself, indeed, feels this difficulty, and 
seeks to escape from it. Consciousness of the 
Unconditioned, or the Absolute, he tells us, ‘igs 
not and cannot be constituted by any single mental 
act, but is the produce of many mental acts.” f 
But if every one of these mental acts has only a 
relative value, how can a series of them produce 
the non-relative? Mr. Spencer tells us of “an 
inscrutable power, manifested through pheno- 
mena.’ ‘ Manifested” and ‘‘ inscrutable: ’’ “ out 
of relation,” and “‘in relation”?! If Mr. Spencer 
were talking mysticism, this might hold. But he 
supposes himself to be talking science! Most 
certainly, if Mr. Spencer’s first principles are true, 
* First Principles, § 26. + Ibid. 


v.] WHAT “THE UNKNOWABLE” REALLY MEANS.}151 


we cannot, in any sense, know the Absolute—still 
less can we have any kind of consciousness of 
it, for consciousness assumes more than know- 
ledge.* 

Mr. Spencer ingenuously confesses, indeed, ‘‘ the 
consciousness of something which is yet out of 
consciousness is mysterious.” + The mystery 1s 
akin to one of which we read in the history of 
Baron Miinchausen, who is related to have lifted 
himself out of a river by his own periwig. Upon 
Mr. Spencer’s own showing, only by going out of 
ourselves, only by transcending what he over and 
over again lays down dogmatically as the impass- 
able limits of intellect, can we attain to any 
acquaintance with the Absolute. In no other way 
can what is out of consciousness be a necessary 
datum of consciousness. The truth is that Mr. 
Spencer here darkens counsel by words without 
knowledge. The Unknowable really means the 
irrational : the self-contradictory: that is, the non- 
existent. Everything, in so far as it is, 1s know- 
able, though not necessarily to this or that orade 
of intelligence. LHsse and percips are synonymous. 
To affirm that a thing is, and that it is unknowable, 
is a contradiction in terms. We must know it, — 
and that in the strict sense of knowing, in order to 


* For a fuller discussion of this subject see the Rev. Dr. 
William Barry’s powerful article, “ Mr. Herbert Spencer's 
Agnosticism,” in the Dublin Review of April, 1888. 

+ Principles of Psychology, § 448. 


152 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


assert that it is; in order to bring it into the 
category of being. JI remember hearing, while an 
undergraduate at Cambridge, of a clergyman of 
vague theological views, then an ornament of the 
University, whose duty it was, upon one occasion, 
to read the Athanasian Creed in his College chapel. 
When the service was over, a friend said: “« Now, 
do you really believe in the Deity about whom we 
have so positively asserted so much?” ‘“ Well,” 
he replied, ‘perhaps there may be a Kind of a 
Something.”’” Mr. Spencer is, of course, at liberty 
to conjecture, with this cautious divine, that there 
may be a Kind of a Something out of conscious- 
ness. But I demur when he proceeds to erect his 
surmise into ‘a datum of philosophy,” and to 
assert dogmatically, “The God that we know, is — 
not; but the God that we know not, is.’’ 

I very confidently contend, then, that Mr. 
Spencer’s fundamental doctrine of The Unknow- 
able is as untenable as are his other two funda- 
mental doctrines of Causation and the Relativity 
of Knowledge. And here, I may remark, that as 
his erroneous theory of relativity has led him thus 
to label the Supreme Object of knowledge, so a 
true theory of relativity would have saved him 
from the antinomies in which he is hopelessly 
involved with regard to this high matter. The 
more the manifold relations of things are ex- 
amined, the more clearly are they seen to be 
rational ; which is another way of saying that they 


Go 


Iv. | AN OUTRAGE UPON REASON. 15% 


reveal a law, in the proper metaphysical sense of 
the word. The world is intelligible. It is Kosmos, 
not Chaos. That is the postulate with which 
physical science itself starts upon its triumphant 
career of investigation. Wordsworth sings of ‘ All 
thinking things, the objects of all thought.” ‘T’he 
classification is just. Goethe somewhere tells us 
that in the subject, the human intellect, there are 
ideas corresponding with the laws in the object, 
external nature. The thought in my mind is fitted 
to grasp the thought in the universe. The reason, 
wherein we consist, it is, that rules in the microcosm 
of the leaf and the macrocosm of the fixed stars: 
‘Cattingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviter- 
que disponens omnia.” The relations of things, 
I say, themselves testify of Objective Reason. 
But in truth Mr. Spencer’s Scientific Agnosti- 
cism is an outrage upon reason. Absorbed in the 
attempt to make, by physical methods, our higher 
faculties out of our lower, he puts aside the self- 
affirmations of the intellect which are the primary 
sources of all knowledge. I speak of those a priory 
or necessary truths which are laws of thought 
because they are absolute uniformities, intuitively 
known as self-evident. Upon such truths physical 
science itself rests. “The uniformity of Nature,” 
for example, “that what has uniformly been in the 
past, will be in the future,’’ is one of them. And 
it is essential to the physicist. He cannot take a . 
step without it. Dr. Bain well calls it ‘‘the one 


154 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


‘ultimate premiss of all induction.” But Mr. 
“Spencer does not recognize the faculty of intuition. 
In truth it is incompatible with his doctrine of The 
Unknowable. The primordial verities which it 
reveals to us he explains as lapsed sensations, as 
experiences of the race transmitted from age to 
age by heredity in organic form to the individual. 
He does not appear so much as to understand what 
metaphysicians mean when they speak of “a 
priori,’ * of “ideals,” of ‘‘laws of thought.” He 
exhibits no acquaintance with the philosophical 
import of the word “necessity.” He refers it, in 
the last analysis, to quantities of matter, to modes 
of motion more or less complicated. I contend, 
on the contrary, that those absolute laws, whether 
of physics, of mathematics, or of morals, which 
dominate all experience, which are intuitively dis- 
cerned by the pure intellect acting a priori, are, in 
truth, independent of the senses. They have their 
deep foundations in the Infinite Mind, in the 
Absolute and Eternal. Immutable and transcen- 
dant, they are, in the words of Leibnitz, ‘‘ what 
God eternally thinks.” They are irreversible even 
by the Omnipotent, for they are grounded in His 
nature, and ‘‘ He cannot deny Himself.” Here, 
and not in any integrations and disintegrations of 
matter, in any collocation and displacement of 


* For example, Mr. Spencer pronounces the indestructibility 
of matter “‘an a priori cognition of the highest order.” It is not 
an a@ priort cognition of any order, high or low. 


a 


IV. | ASSUMPTIONS NOT FACTS. 155 


molecules, is the ultimate basis of metaphysics. 
‘Totus ordo metaphysicus,’’ Cardinal Franzelin 
writes, ‘‘constituitur legibus mnecessarlis essen- 
tiarum, que leges ideo sunt necessarie, quia divina 
essentia eas postulat. Unde ipsa essentia divina, 
non libera voluntate, est ex necessaria sua pertec- 
tione, est fons et mensura totius etiam veritatis 
ordinis metaphysici.”’ * 


The truth is, that Mr. Spencer has approached 
philosophy from the wrong side. His psychology 
is but physiology thinly disguised in a few meta- 
physical rags and tatters. Yet, with all his 
parade of physical science, his system is not 
really founded upon experience at all. Its three 
cardinal doctrines, which we have examined, are 
assumptions, not facts. It is the most con- 
spicuous example of the a prior: method with 
which I am acquainted. I do not doubt, but 
strongly affirm the legitimacy of that method, 
when rightly used. Hypothesis has, for example, 
a well-understood place even in the experimental 
sciences. To give only one instance—What 1s 


‘the undulatory theory of light but an hypothesis ? 


—an excellent working hypothesis: but undemon- 
strated as yet. Again, great physical discoveries 
have never been the mere result of laborious 


* De Deo, p. 316. 


156 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [CH. 


analysis, of conscious induction. They are due 
primarily to the exercise of ‘“‘the vision and the 
faculty divine.’’ ‘‘Something of the poet’s in- 
sight,” writes Helmholtz, “of that insight which 
led Goethe and Leonardo da Vinci to great 
scientific ideas also, must be possessed by the true 
man of science. Like the artist, he aims at the 
discovery of new laws, however different their 
mode of operation.’ * To invent (invenire) means 
to find. The law is there already. The larger 
eye of genius discerns it through the veil which 
hides it. It is perfectly true that the physicist 
uses the experimental method to test and verify 
his prophetic anticipation. It is equally true that 
an idea a priori, is his primum movens, his point 
of departure. But Mr. Spencer, while professing 
to go by experience, starts, like a medieval theorist, 
with the assumption of those absolute principles, 
the value of which we have considered, and 
endeavours to rear upon this problematical con- 
ception his theory of the universe. I am far from 


‘finding fault with Mr. Spencer’s desire for a 
_ synthesis which shall unify all knowledge. I 
| suppose we have all, more or less strongly, a sense 
of the secret solidarity of all truth, of the hidden 


| oneness of all existence. We begin with Dualism. 


But we cannot rest in it. We thirst ‘to find the 
one in the manifold.” All philosophy is a search 
after unity. And in some sense we are all 


* Die Thatsachen der Wahrnemung, p. 44. 


Iv. | A TYRANNY OF DOGMATISM. ; 157 


philosophers, even the least metaphysical of us. 
We seek to bring into harmony our knowledge, 
our emotions, our wills, as they centre round our- 
selves and the invisible powers, by whatever name 
we designate them, in whom, for one reason or 
another, we believe. Of all hypothetical syntheses 
none seems to me less successful than Mr. 
Spencer’s. It is surely—to borrow the words of 
Professor Virchow—‘‘a tyranny of dogmatism, 
which undertakes to master the whole view of 
Nature by prematurely generalizing theoretical 
combinations.” I am by no means insensible to 
the value of the mass of facts which Mr. Spencer 
has so diligently collected. I admit that some of 
his generalizations unquestionably hold good, and 
that others may very likely be satisfactorily estab- 
lished hereafter. His speculative history of the 
universe undoubtedly contains large elements of 
truth. But assuredly his system rests upon no 
sufficient ultimate grounds; his primordial prin- 
ciples lack foundation in the order of being and 
eternal reality; his ratiocination is not seldom a 
mass of contradictions, and a plexus of ambiguities. 


It appears to me, then, that Mr. Spencer’s 
gigantic hypothesis, which should have been 
reared upon foundations of adamant, is built upon 
thesand. But Mr. Spencer’s Scientific Agnosticism 


158 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ cir. 


is not merely speculative. He teaches us not only 
what to believe, but what to do. He preaches to 
mankind new morals as well as a new faith. By 
many of his disciples his ethical doctrine is regarded 
as his supreme achievement. And, certainly, for 
practical purposes it is his most important. Mr. 
Spencer himself, indeed, so accounts it. In his 
preface to the Data of Htlics he tells us that ‘as 
far back as 1842,” the date of his first essay, his 
“ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate 
purposes,” was “that of finding for the principles 
of right and wrong in conduct at large a scientific 
basis.””’ This was the “last part of the task ’’— 
the colossal task—whereunto he has devoted his 
life; and to it he regards ‘‘ all the preceding parts 
as subsidiary.” It was the fear of leaving this 
purpose unfulfilled which led him to give to the 
world his Data of Ethics out of its proper place in 
his system—a work, he tells us, which, though it 
does not exhibit in detail his ‘specific conclu- 
sions,’ yet ‘“‘implies them in such wise that 
definitely to formulate them requires nothing 
beyond logical deductions.” And here let me 
cite, 7 extenso, the passage which immediately 
follows, and which it would be unfair to Mr. 
Spencer to abbreviate. | 

‘“‘T am the more anxious to indicate in outline, if I cannot 
complete, this final work, because the establishment of rules 
of right conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now 


that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their 
supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming 


Vv | “A MORAL VACUUM.” 159 


imperative. Few things can happen more disastrous than the 
decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before 
another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace 
it. Most of those who reject the current creed appear to 
assume that the controlling agency furnished by it may 
safely be thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any 
other controlling agency. Meanwhile, those who defend the 
current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance it 
yields, no guidance can exist; divine commandments they 
think the only possible guides. Thus between these extreme 
opponents there is a certain community. The one holds that 
the gap left by disappearance of the code of supernatural 
ethics need not be filled by a code of natural ethics ; and the 
other holds that it cannot be so filled. Both contemplate a 
vacuum, which the one wishes and the other fears. As the 
change which promises or threatens to bring about this state, 
desired or dreaded, is rapidly progressing, those who believe 
that the vacuum can be filled, and that it must be filled, are 
called on to do something in pursuance of their belief.” * 


It has been pointed out, in the first chapter of 
this work, how greatly Mr. Spencer errs in suppos- 
ing transcendental moralists to regard ‘“ divine com- 
mands’’ as ‘the only possible guides ”’ in ethics. 
And his error is the more astonishing since Dean 
Mansel, with whose writings he is evidently well 
acquainted, might have preserved him from it. 
“God,” that philosopher well says, “did not 
create absolute morality, it is co-eternal with Him- 
self.’ + The old data of ethics which have guided 
the civilized world for so many generations are not 


* his chapter was written before the publication of Mr. 
Spencer’s book on Justice. But nothing in that work leads 
me to modify the views which I have expressed in the text. 

+ Limits of Religious Thought, p. 146. 


160 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH, 


‘‘ supernatural” although they assuredly are super- 
sensuous. They are, in themselves, independent 
of religion, although no doubt religion, especially 
the Christian religion, has invested them with 
cogent sanctions. And no doubt, also, if, as Mr. 
Spencer considers, the Christian religion is an 
out-worn creed, already quite discredited for 
higher intellects, and gradually, but surely, losing 
its power over the popular mind, an ethical 
‘“vacuum’’ (to use his somewhat odd phrase) may 
reasonably be feared. Mr. Spencer applies himself 
to fill that vacuum. And, whatever we may think 
of his success, assuredly we must honour him for 
the endeavour. Mr. Spencer knows well that with- 
out morality society cannot hold together. ‘ Few 
things can happen more disastrous than the decay 
and death of a regulative system, no longer fit, 
before another and fitter regulative system has 
grown up to replace it.” True, indeed. The 
greatest benefactors of mankind have been those 
who have conducted our race upward on the path 
of ethical progress. And, certainly, if Mr. Spencer 
is warranted in his pretensions as a preacher of 
righteousness, we may well venerate him as not the 
least among that goodly company of prophets. 
What more august, what more sacred enterprise is 
conceivable, than to rescue the ideas of right and 
wrong from destruction, and to establish them for 
all time upon the everlasting rock of science? Let 
us inquire, then, how far these high pretensions are 


Iv. | IS “GOOD” A SUPERFLUOUS WORD? 161 


warranted. An examination of the ethics of Scien- 
tific Agnosticism is the proper complement to our 
examination of its theology. 


How, then, are we to account for that ‘“ fitter 
regulative system of conduct” which Mr. Spencer 
invites mankind to accept? The answer is sug- 
gested by certain words of Coleridge which occur 
tomy mind. ‘The sum total of moral philosophy 
is found in this one question: Is good a superfluous 
word—or a mere lazy synonym for the pleasurable 
and its causes;—at most a mere modification to 
express degree and comparative duration of plea- 
sure? Or the question may be more answerably 
stated, thus: Is good superfluous as a word expo- 
nent of a kind? Ifit be, then moral philosophy is 
but asubdivision of physics.” * There are, in truth, 
two, and only two, great schools in ethics, however 
much their adherents may differ in details. There 
is the school which seeks to ascertain morality from 
the spiritual nature of man by methods purely 
rational. There is the school which denies the 
transcendental ground of man’s being, and which 
seeks to derive morality from his animal nature, by 
methods merely physical. There is the school 
which finds the real aboriginal principle of morals 
in pleasure or agreeable feeling. There is the school 


* Table Talk, p. 157. 
M 


162 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


which finds it in intuitions of equity, held to be 
primordial and independent elements of our nature. 

Now, there can be no question to which of these 
schools Mr. Spencer belongs. His philosophy, 
viewed as a whole, is, as we have seen, an attempt 
to construct a complete scheme of the universe by 
means of the persistence, under various transform- 
ations, of that manifestation of The Unknowable 
which he calls Force; to unify knowledge of phe- 
nomena, the only knowledge held by him to be 
possible, and to trace everywhere the one cosmical 
processus. ‘Thus, in his Lirst Principles, he applies 
his one great formula of the Persistence of Force 
to the evolution of the universe from its primitive 
_ gaseous elements to its present stage. In his 
Principles of Biology he seeks, by means of this 
formula, to account for the structure and functional 
complexities of plant and animal life: ‘‘life”’ being 
explained by him as ‘‘ the continuous adjustment 
of inner to outer relations,” but neither ‘“‘inner’”’ 
nor ‘‘outer”’ being defined. In his Principles of 
Psychology the self-same formula unlocks for him 
all doors. By its aid he exhibits the development 
of the most complex intellectual processes, from 
the first indefinite unit of feeling; of conscious- 
ness, from the nervous system; of thought, from 
things. He insists upon the identity of intellectual 
conceptions and material impressions. He makes 
of mind the outcome of groups of sensations. In- 
stinct, memory, reason, he represents as all evolved 
in the mind by its effort to maintain the adjust- 


IV. | MORALITY AND EVOLUTION. 163 


ment with the environment. The faculty of reason 
receives no real recognition in his psychology— 
what he calls psychology. True, he tells us that 
‘a rational synthesis must build up” from the 
“ultimate analysis.” But his synthesis is not 
rational. The facts are not subjected to the judg- 
ment of reason. ven when he is not arguing a 
priori, he does not get beyond the sequence which 
sensible experience reveals. He does not exhibit 
-——he does not allow—the intelligible efficient deter- 
mining the effect. He sees in the operations of 
the Will merely the invariable—by which he means 
inevitable—results of nervous action, of atomic 
movements of matter. 

And in ethics his method is similar. He at- 
tempts to construct a science of morals out of phy- 
sical elements, by means of his one formula.* He 
lays it down in his Data of Ethics that “ there is. 
an entire correspondence between moral evolu- 

* “ Here, then, we have to enter on the consideration of the 
moral phenomena as phenomena of evolution; being forced to. 
do this by finding that they form a part of the aggregate of 
phenomena which evolution has wrought out. If the entire 
visible universe has been evolved—if the solar system as a whole, 
the earth as a part of it, the life in general which the earth bears, 
as wellas that of each individual organism—if the mental pheno- 
mena displayed by all creatures, up to the highest, in common 
with the phenomena presented by aggregates of these highest— 
if one and all conform to the laws of evolution; then the neces- 
sary implication is that those phenomenaof conduct in the highest. 
creatures with which morality is concerned, also conform.’’—Data 
of Ethics, § 23. But those “ laws of evolution ” are considered by 


Mr. Spencer as purely physical. He expressly tells us ($29) that 
‘Ca vedistribution of matter and motion constitutes evolution.” 


164 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cu. 


tion and evolution as physically defined.” * And 
throughout his First Principles and his Principles 
of Psychology, he insists that the physical produces 
the mental evolution. Thus, in the latter work, 
we read, ‘‘ Corresponding to absolute external rela- 
tions, there are established in the structure of the 
nervous system absolute internal relations, .. . 
antecedent to, and independent of, individual 
experiences.” + But these are ‘‘not independent 
of experiences in general.” ‘‘The human brain 
is an organized register of infinitely numerous 
experiences, received during the evolution of life, 
or rather . . . during the evolution of that series 
of organisms through which the human organism 
has been reached:”’ and thus ‘‘arise, at length, 
our Newtons and Shakespeares.”{ Again, he tells 
us that there is “‘no impassable chasm” § between 
psychology and physiology. He holds that neither 
the lower nor the higher psychical life is absolutely 
distinguished from physical life: that intelligence 
arises out of feeling: and, indeed, generally, that 
‘‘advance from the simplest to the most complex 
cognitions is explicable on the principle that the 
outer relations produce the inner relations.” || For 
him ‘the problem is to interpret mental evolution 
in terms of the redistribution of Matter and 
Motion.’ He accounts as ‘‘ comparatively con- 


¥ Sto) + Principles of Psychology, § 208. 
{ Ibid. § 208. Observe the extreme vagueness of this word 
“independent.” It may mean uncaused by, or unconditioned by. 


§ Ibid. § 177. || Ibed. § 214. { Ibid. § 221. 


= 


ge 


Iv, | MATTER AND MIND. 165 


sistent ’’* that very remarkable Materialistic dic- 
tum ‘that the activities of the imponderable 
substance [ether], though far simpler, and in that 
respect far lower, than the activities we call Mind, 
are at the same time far higher than those we call 
Mind in respect of their intensity, their velocity, 
their subtlety. What has been gained in adapt- 
ability has been lost in vivacity.’t ‘Though 
thought,” he observes, ‘‘is quick, light is many 
millions of times quicker,’ {and the conclusion 
he reaches is that ‘‘we can think of Matter only 
in terms of Mind: we can think of Mind only in 
terms of Matter:’’ but, observe, that in the Spen- 
cerian doctrine of evolution, it is Matter that 
produces Mind.¢ ‘‘ Phenomena’’—he makes no 


* Data of Ethics, § 272. + Ibid. § 271. t Ibid. 

§ “The progress from these forms of feeling considerably 
compounded to those highly compounded forms of feeling seen 
in human beings, equally harmonizes with the general principles 
of evolution that have been laid down. We saw that advance 
from the simplest to the most complex cognitions, is explic- 
able on the principle that the outer relations produce the inner 
relations. We shall see that this same principle supplies an 
explanation of the advance from the simplest to the most com- 
plex feelings. For when the development of Life reaches this 
repeatedly described stage in which automatic actions merge 
into actions that are at once conscious, rational, and emotive ; 
what must be the effect of further experiences? The effect 
must be that if, in connection with a group of impressions and 
the nascent motor changes resulting from it, there is habitually 
some other impression or group of impressions, some other 
motor change or group of motor changes, this will, in process 
of time, be rendered so coherent to the original group, that it, 
too, will become nascent when the original group becomes nas- 
cent, and will render the original group nascent if it is itself 
induced.” —Principles of Psychology, § 214. 


166 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


exception—-‘‘ are interpretable only as the results 
of universally co-existent forces of attraction and 
repulsion:”’ forces that are, indeed, the comple- 
mentary aspects of that absolutely persistent Force 
which is the ultimate datum of consciousness.* 
“Those modes of the Unknowable which we call 
motion, heat, ight, chemical affinity, etc., are alike 
transformable into each other, and into those 
modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish as 
sensation, emotion, thought: these, in their turns, 
being directly cr indirectly retransformable into 
the original shapes.” ¢ ‘That no idea or feeling 
arises, save as a result of some physical force 
expended in producing it, is fast becoming a com- 
monplace of science.’ { ‘If the general law of 
transformation and equivalence holds of the forces 
we class as vital and mental, it must hold also of 
those which we class as social.’”’§ Here are both 
ends of the chain. Attraction and Repulsion trans- 
form themselves into the phenomena of Egoism 
and Altruism, and Ethics results from the Persist- 
ence of Force.|| ‘‘ Force being persistent, the 
transformation which Evolution shows us, neces- 
sarily results.’ And “the deepest truths we can 
reach’’—in morals as elsewhere—‘‘are simply 
statements of the widest uniformities in our expe- 


* First Principles, § 176. cee ee Sa 
+ Ibid. § 71. $ Ted 879) 
|| See the explicit statement in First Principles, § 73. 
q{ frst Principles, § 189. 


IV. | THE MANUFACTURE OF MORALITY. 167 


rience of the relations of Matter, Motion, and 
Korce.”’ * 


So much must suffice as to Mr. Spencer’s method 
in moral philosophy. Let us go on to consider his 
application of it, and see how he manufactures 
morality from prior conditions that were unmoral. 
He tells us ‘‘ Ethics has for its subject-matter that 
form which universal conduct assumes, during the 
last stage of its evolution.” + And elsewhere he 
defines it as “‘ Nothing else than a definite account 
of the forms of conduct that are fitted to the asso- 
ciated state, in such wise that the lives of each 
and all may be the greatest possible, alike in length 
and breadth.” t By ‘‘ conduct”? he means “ acts 
adjusted to ends, or else the adjustment of acts to 
ends.’§ And “always acts are called good or 
bad, as they are well or ill adjusted to ends.” | 
Thus ‘‘the goodness or badness of a pointer or 
a hunter, of a sheep or an ox, ignoring all other 
attributes of these creatures, refers, in the one 
case, to the fitness of their actions for effecting 
the ends men use them for, and in the other case, 
to the qualities of their flesh as adapting it to 
support human life.” { Conduct which subserves 
“the welfare of self, of offspring, and of fellow- 
citizens ’”’ “is regarded as relatively good.” ** But 


* First Principles, § 194. + Data of Ethics, § 7. 
t Ibid. § 48. § Ibid. § 2. || Ibid. § 8 (Ibid. ** Ibid. 


168 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


‘evolution becomes the highest possible when the 
conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest 
totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow- 
men.” ‘The conduct called good rises to the 
conduct conceived as best, when it fulfils all three 
classes of ends at the same time.” * Conduct, in 
short, is good or bad, according to the Spencerian 
ethics, as it increases or diminishes the sum total 
of life. Why? Because life is the highest good. 
‘The final justification for maintaining life can 
only be the reception from it of a surplus of 
pleasurable feeling over painful feeling.” ft ‘In 
calling good the conduct which subserves life, and 
bad the conduct which hinders or destroys it, 
and in so implying that life is a blessing and not 
a curse, we are inevitably asserting that conduct 
is good or bad, according as its total effects are 
pleasurable or painful.” t Or, as he elsewhere 
puts 16, ‘‘ Acts are good or bad, according as their 
ageregate effects increase men’s happiness or 


Increase their misery.”§ It is impossible to 
' “ignore the ultimate derivations of right and 


wrong from pleasure and pain.’’ || : 
I beg of the reader to ponder this doctrine a 
little. Mr. Spencer sees in every animal move- 
ment what, of course, we all see: an adaptation of 
means to ends. And he rightly considers that 


* Data of Ethics,§ 8. + Ibid. $10. ${. Ibid.cu§ Ibid, § 14. 
| Ibid. Observe the vagueness of “ derivations.” Does it 
mean cause or condition ? 


IV. | THE EVOLUTION OF CONDUCT. 169 


adaptation a good. The evolution of conduct he 
holds to consist in an ever more perfect adaptation 
of the most complex means to a totality of ends 
ever more diversified, and, at the same time, ever 
more closely linked together in a harmonious 
unity. And his view embraces not merely ind1- 
vidual life, but social life; nay, the universal life 
of humanity. Every act adapted to its end is 
good. And the test of goodness in conduct is that 
it subserves that evolution which is the general 
and common end of all being. Good conduct is, 
in short, the conduct relatively the most developed ; 
bad conduct the conduct relatively the least de- 
veloped. Moral good, then, according to Mr. 
Spencer, does not differ essentially from physical 
good. ‘‘The conduct with which Morality is not 
concerned, passes into conduct which is moral or 
unmoral, by small degrees, and in countless ways,”’* 
the “broad distinction’’ being ‘‘a greater cohe- 
rence among its component motions.” f ‘The 
ideal goal to the natwral evolution of conduct .. . 
we recognize as the ideal standard of conduct 
ethically considered.” { The goodness of a hunter 
and the goodness of a hero, the goodness of a sausage 
and the goodness of a saint, are for Mr. Spencer, en 
kind, identical. And the test of goodness is always 
the same: not the character of the agent, not the 
quality of his intention; no: but the pleasurable 


* Data of Ethics, § 2. + Ibid. § 26. 
t Ibid. § 15. The italics are mine. 


170 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


tendency of his acts. ‘‘ Beyond the conduct 
commonly approved of, or reprobated, as right 
or wrong, there is included all conduct which 
furthers or hinders, in either direct or indirect 
ways, the welfare of self or others.” ‘Taking 
into account the immediate effects on all persons, 
the good is universally the pleasurable.” * Virtue. 
possesses no primordial and independent character. 
It is whatever, as a means, promotes, on the whole, 
the supreme end—pleasure. 


This is Mr. Spencer’s treatment of the funda- 
mental question wherewith ethics is concerned: 
the nature of moral good: the difference between 
right and wrong. We will next consider his 
account of that faculty, witnessing for a moral 
law, which we have been accustomed to call 
conscience, and to esteem the endowment in 
virtue of which man is an ethical being. What 
is Mr. Spencer’s explanation of conscience? of 
the Categorical Imperative of Duty? Well, con- 
science is for him merely a nervous structure: 
duty is only a way of apprehending life, whereby 
we are led to subordinate proximate to ultimate 
satisfaction. ‘‘ The moral motive,’ he tells us— 
the true moral motive—‘ is constituted by repre- 
sentations of consequences which the acts naturally 
produce. Those representations are not all dis- 

* Data of Ethics, § 10. 


Iv. | THE MORAL MOTIVE. 171 


tinct, though some of them are usually present : 
but they form an assemblage of indistinct repre- 
sentations accumulated from experience of the 
results of like acts in the life of the individual, 
superposed on a still more indistinct but volu- 
minous consciousness, due to the inherited effects 
of such experiences in progenitors: forming a feel- 
ing that is, at once, massive and vague.’ * ‘The 
truly moral deterrent from murder” is a repre- 
sentation of ‘‘ the infliction of death-agony on the 
victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of 
happiness, the entailed sufferings to his belong- 
ings.”’ The moral check on theft is ‘‘ the thought 
of injury to the person robbed, joined with a vague 


* Data of Ethics, § 45. “Corresponding to the fundamental 
propositions of a developed Moral Science, there have been, and 
still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral 
intuitions; ... though these moral intuitions are the results 
of accumulated experiences of utility, gradually organized and 
inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious 
experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition 
of space, possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from 
organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent indi- 
viduals who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nervous 
organizations—just as I believe that this intuition, requiring 
only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, 
has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite 
independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences 
of utility organized and consolidated through all past genera- 
tions of the human race, have been producing corresponding 
nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and 
accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral 
intuition— certain emotions responding to right and wrong 
conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual 
experiences of utility.” 


172 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (cH. 


consciousness of the general evils caused by dis- 
regard of proprietary rights.’’ ‘‘ ‘l'hose who repro- 
bate the adulterer on moral grounds have their 
minds filled . . . with ideas of unhappiness en- 
tailed on the aggrieved wife or husband, the 
damaged lives of children, and the diffused 
mischiefs which go along with disregard of the 
marriage tie.’’* These, according to Mr. Spencer, 
are ‘‘the restraints properly distinguished as 
moral,’’ and he considers that they are evolved 
from restraints which are not moral at all: namely, 
political restraints originating in fear of angering 
the tribal chief; religious restraints, springing from 
dread of ghosts; and social restraints, prompted 
by dislike of being shunned. ‘These ... kinds 
of internal control . . . though, at first, they are 
practically co-extensive and undistinguished .. . 
in the course of social evolution differentiate, and 
eventually the moral control, with its accompany- 
ing conceptions and sentiments, emerges as inde- 
pendent,” + by a process which Mr. Spencer 
describes at much length. It may be noted that 
he claims for this hypothesis of his the merit that 
‘Cit enables us to reconcile opposed moral theories. 
For as the doctrine of innate forms of intellectual 
intuition falls into harmony with the experiential 
doctrine, when we recognize the production of 
intellectual faculties by inheritance of effects 
wrought by experience; so does the doctrine of 
innate powers of moral perception become con- 
* Data of Ethics, § 45. + Ibid. § 44. 


iv.| “THE FEELING OF MORAL OBLIGATION.” 173 


gruous with the utilitarian doctrine, when it is 
seen that preferences and aversions are rendered 
organic by inheritance of the effects of pleasurable 
and painful experiences in progenitors.” * 

It is clear, then, that in Mr. Spencer’s ethics, 
the moral consciousness is wholly a social product, 
due to the causes which he sets forth: the 
observed or expected consequences of acts: chief 
among which are the penalties, real or imaginary, 
entailed by prohibited forms of conduct. But, as 
he justly remarks, ‘‘one further question has to 
be answered—How does there arise the feeling 
of moral obligation?’’+ (Observe, not the fact 
of moral obligation, but the feeling.) He replies, 
‘Since with the restraints thus generated is 
always joined the thought of external coercion, 
there arises the notion of obligation:’’{ ‘a 
notion,’ writes Dr. Martineau, ‘“‘ which he after- 
wards curiously interprets as equivalent to the 
indispensableness of any means towards a given 
end,—the means being that which we are obliged 
to employ, if we would secure the end.§ For 
instance, if a carnivorous animal is to live, it must 
eat; if it is to eat, it must kill; if kill, 16 must 
catch; if catch, it must chase; and so it is under 
an obligation to do each of these things. To this 
generic idea of obligation, the differentia ‘ Moral’ 
is added on, when it is concerned with the means 


* Data of Ethics, § 40. 
+ Ibid. § 46. t Ibid. § 44. § Ibid. § 58. 


174 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (cH. 


of avoiding the political, social, and religious 
penalties attached to certain conduct. The ‘moral 
consciousness’ is thus the self-application of a 
lesson learned ab extra.”’ * 

In the Spencerian doctrine, then, conscience 
with its authoritativeness and -coerciveness is not 
the formal principle and rule of ethics, but 
an adventitious element; nay, a ‘‘transitory”’ 
element, which ‘‘ will diminish as fast as morali- 
zation increases.’ Mr. Spencer considers it 
“evident”? that when the human machine is 
perfected by evolution, ‘“‘that element in the 
/ moral consciousness which is expressed by the 
word obligation will disappear. The higher actions 
required for the harmonious carrying on of life, 
will be as much matter of course as are those 
lower actions, which the simple desires prompt: 
. . . the moral sentiments will guide men just as 
spontaneously and adequately as now ‘do the 
sensations.” [ Closely connected with this tenet 
of the Spencerian gospel is that of the evanescence 
of evil. ‘Hvolution,’? Mr. Spencer assures us, 
‘‘can end only in the establishment of the greatest 
perfection and the most complete happiness.” § 


I have now put before my readers the funda- 


* Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. p. 26. 

| Data of Ethics, § 46. t Ibid. 

§ First Principles, § 176. Mr. Spencer has pursued this 
subject at greater length in his Social Statics. 


IV. | AN ABSOLUTE CONTRADICTION. 175 


mental positions of that ‘‘fitter regulative system ” 
which Scientific Agnosticism proposes to us in the 
place of the rule of right and wrong hitherto 
received. What are we to think of it? In reply 
to that question I shall make four observations, 
which although, of course, not unfolding in detail 
my conclusions, yet—to use Mr. Spencer’s own 
words—“ imply them in such wise that definitely 
to formulate them requires nothing beyond logical 
deductions.”’ 

And first, I would remark, that Mr. Spencer’s 
ethical doctrine is at variance with the primary 
principle upon which his whole system rests. ‘I 
do not ask,’ said Talleyrand, upon one occasion, 
‘that my opponent should be of my opinion; but 
I may fairly expect him to be of his own.” This 
is precisely what Mr. Spencer is not. There is 
an absolute contradiction between his hedonistic 
morality’ and his account of the great law of 
evolution: the law of all living beings from the 
most rudimentary, to the most highly specialized. 
Evolution does not demand as its starting-point 
any degree of sensibility, any capacity for pleasure 
and pain. It is essentially the advance from an 
inferior to a superior state. But agreeable feeling 
is by no means necessarily attached to that 
advance. Hven among the higher vertebrates, 
in which consciousness and emotional sensibility 
are largely developed, agreeable feeling is not the 
sole form of life, the sole subject of evolution. 


176 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


Health, physical strength, the due proportion of 
limbs, the harmonious working of the physical 
organs, are real goods, of which one may be more, 
or less, sensible, but which exist in their entirety, 
irrespective of the agreeable feeling received from 
them. We may assuredly say the like of the 
intellectual powers. And, as assuredly, we must 
include among the goods of life the orderly 
interaction, the rhythmical balance, of all the 
component parts of our being. Sensibility de- 
velops with the rest; and the agreeable feeling 
resulting from it has place in the total perfection 
issuing from the concordant development of all 
our faculties. But—this is the point on which 
I am insisting—agreeable feeling, where it is 
found, is merely an accompaniment. Mr. Spencer 
allows that, as evolution progresses, pleasure and 
pain do no more than accompany actions, which 
are, in themselves, advantageous or hurtful. 
How, then, can it be the sole end, the supreme 
ideal? Again, nothing is more certain than the 
variations of sensibility, depending, as it does, 
upon individual character and environment. Mr. 
Spencer shows this, at length, in his chapter on 
‘<The Relativity of Pleasures and Pains.” The fact 
is that there is no sort of correspondence between 
the degree of perfection and the satisfaction of 
sensibility ; and therefore pleasure cannot possibly 
be the measure of good. But further. The 
operative principle of evolution is the struggle for 


IV] A VOLTE-FACE. 177 


existence ; which means that the pleasure of one 
being is obtained by the pain of another; or, as 
Mr. Spencer euphemistically expresses it, that 
‘very generally a successful adjustment made by 
one creation involves an unsuccessful adjustment 
made by another creation, either of the same 
kind or a different kind.”* But this principle 
Mr. Spencer completely abandons in the ultimate 
form of human society whereof he prophesies. 
‘““ Pleasure,” he assures us, ‘will eventually 
accompany every mode of action demanded by 
social conditions.” As we saw just now, Mr. 
Spencer pronounces this “evident.” How is it 
evident? There is no kind of evidence for it. 
And it is as far as possible from being self-evident, 
for the more automatic an act is, the less pleasur- 
able is it. There is no reason whatever, beyond 
Mr. Spencer’s zpse dixit, for believing that “the 
form which universal conduct assumes during the 
last stage of evolution ’’—such, it will be remem- 
bered, is Mr. Spencer’s definition of ethics—wil] 
be in direct opposition to the fundamental principle 
of evolution. Mr. Spencer, indeed, does not speak 
of opposition. He masks his volte-face by the 
word antithesis. ‘‘Imperfectly involved conduct,” 
he writes, ‘ introduces us, by antithesis, to 
conduct that is perfectly involved.” + Antithesis! 
indeed. It is really a complete abandonment of 
the evolutionary hypothesis. 
* Data of Ethics, § 6. t Ibid. 


bad 


178 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (OH. 


But—to go on to my second observation—Mr. 
Spencer’s whole teaching essentially depends upon 
arbitrary assumptions of this kind. I know of no 
speculator who makes more violent demands upon 
our credulity; who so liberally indulges in a 
licence of dogmatism. At the very points in his 
system where proof—such proof, of course, as the 
nature of the case admits of—should be forth- 
coming, he has nothing to offer but a nude 
assertion. ‘Take, for example, his doctrine of one 
ultimate form of matter, as expounded in his 
Principles of Psychology. His object is to eluci- 
date the nature of Mind by comparing it with the 
nature of Matter,* or rather, to justity his con- 
jecture representing Mind by a parallelism ‘ with 
that which chemists have established respecting 
Matter.” It is a curious and characteristic en- 
deavour. Let us see how he sets about it. We 
might reasonably look, in the first place, for a 
clear and precise account of what chemists have 
established about Matter. We should look in vain. 
Mr. Spencer begins by remarking, generally, 
“ Multitudinous substances that seem to be homo- 
geneous and simple prove to be really heterogeneous 
and compound; and many that appear wholly 
unrelated are shown by analysis to be near akin.” 
He then proceeds as follows :— 


“There is reason to suspect that ... there is but one ultimate 
form of Matter, out of which the successively-more complex 


* Data of Ethics, § 61. 


1v.] A WORDY EDIFICE. 179 


forms of Matter are built up. By the different grouping of 
units, and by the combination of the unlike groups each with 
its own kind, and each with other kinds, it is supposed that 
there have been produced the kinds of matter we call ele- 
mentary; just as, by further compositions similarly carried 
on, these produce further varieties and complexities. And this 
supposition the phenomena of allotropism go far to justify, by 
showing us that the same mass of molecules assumes quite 
different properties when the mode of aggregation is changed. 
If, then, we see that by unlike arrangements of like units, all 
the forms of Matter, apparently so diverse in nature, may be 
produced—if, even without assuming that the so-called elements 
are compound, we remember how from a few of these there 
may arise by transformation and by combination numerous 
seemingly-simple substances, strongly contrasted with their 
constituents and with one another—we shall the better conceive 
the possibility that the multitudinous forms of Mind known as 
different feelings, may be composed of simpler units of feeling, 
and even of units fundamentally of one kind,” * 


I beg the reader’s attention to the words which 
I have put in italics. He will observe that 
Mr. Spencer begins with a suspicion; which ig 
presently magnified to a supposition; and a few 
lines further on to a fact: “we gee.” But in 
truth the “suspicion”? on which this wordy edifice 
is reared is a mere hypothesis. We may if we 
please ‘‘ suspect ’—what is to hinder us ?—“ that 
there is but one ultimate form of Matter.’ We 
have no right to make our suspicion the corner- 
stone of a philosophical system. 

Again. It is essential to Mr. Spencer’s specula- 
tions that the origin of consciousness should be 


* Principles of Psychology, § 61. 


180 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


found in the nervous system. ‘This is how he 
finds it :-— 


“Those abilities which an intelligent creature possesses, of 
recognizing diverse external objects and of adjusting its actions 
to composite phenomena of various kinds, imply a power of 
combining many separate impressions. These separate im- 
pressions are received by the senses... [and] must be all 
brought into relation with one another. But this implies 
some centre of communication common to them all, through 
which they severally pass; and as they cannot pass through 
it simultaneously, they must pass through it in succession. 
So that as the external phenomena responded to become 
greater in number and more complicated in kind, the variety 
and rapidity of the changes to which this common centre of 
communication is subject must increase—there must result 
an unbroken series of these changes—there must arise a con- 
sciousness.” * 


Must! Comment upon this “must” is surely 
superfluous. And such is Mr. Spencer’s method 
throughout his Psychology. As Professor Green 
has observed, with entire accuracy, ‘Che first 
triumphantly explains, through three-fourths of 
the book, the genesis of ‘thought’ from ‘things,’ 
on the strength of the asswmed priority and in- 
dependence of the latter, and defers the considera- 
tions likely to raise the question whether this 
assumption is correct—he never directly raises it 
himself—till he can approach them with the 
prestige of a system already proved adequate and 
successful.” F 


* Principles of Psychology, § 179. The italics are mine. 
+ Works, vol. i. p. 389. 


1v.] A FALSE ANALOGY. 181 


Once more. In his account of “the genesis of 
the moral consciousness,” or, as he prefers to call 
it, ‘‘the feeling of moral obligation,’”’ Mr. Spencer 
is equally dogmatic. ‘‘ Accumulated experiences,” 
he tells us, ‘‘ have produced the consciousness that 
guidance by feelings which refer to remote and 
general results is usually more conducive to welfare 
than guidance by feelings to be immediately 
gratified.” ‘The idea of authoritativeness has, 
therefore, come to be connected with” ‘‘ complex 
re-representative feelings.” ‘‘ Fears of the political 
and social penalties (to which, I think, the religious 
must be added) have generated that sense of 
coerciveness which goes along with the thought 
of postponing present to future, and personal 
desires to the claim for others.” * Mr. Spencer’s 
whole moral doctrine rests upon these three pro- 
positions. Are they self-evident? No. Are they 
proved ? Assuredly not. Experience by no means 
warrants them. Introspection and analysis alike 
fail to support them. Here again we have no 
other foundation for Mr. Spencer’s dogma than 
Mr. Spencer’s zpse dizit. He does indeed offer us 
in support of it an analogy. ‘‘The sentiment of 
duty,’ he tells us, ‘‘is an abstract sentiment 
generated in a manner analogous to that in which 
abstract ideas are generated:’’ and by way of 
example he adduces the abstract idea of colour. 
Unfortunately for Mr, Spencer, the analogy 1s a 

* Data of Ethics, § 46. The italics are mine. 


182 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


false one, as I have had occasion to point out else- 
where. ‘‘ Colour, in general, no doubt is known 
by abstraction from colours in particular. But 
moral obligation in general cannot by any possi- 
bility be abstracted from a representation ‘of the 
natural consequences’ in particular, for the very 
simple reason that it is not contained in them. 
‘Moral’ is one genus; ‘natural consequences,’ 
meaning pains or pleasures, another. And in 
abstracting, as in syllogizing, we are forbidden to 
pass from this genus to that genus. This is 
elementary metaphysics; or, if Mr. Spencer pre- | 
fers my so putting it, elementary common-sense. 
If the specific thing called morality is not in the 
particular actions under the form of ‘authority’ 
and ‘coerciveness,’ it cannot be got from them by 
abstraction. If it is, the genesis of it remains to 
be investigated, and cannot be explained by an 
abstraction which has not yet taken place. The 
sophism—really Mr. Spencer must pardon me the 
word—is glaring. From particular colours, colour 
in general. Concedo. From particular pleasures 
and pains, pleasure and pain in general. By all 
means. But from the representation of (future) 
pleasures and pains, morality in general! Why 
not, then, sunbeams from cucumbers, or the 
sense of ethical justice from the varieties of the 
triangle ?”’ * 

My third observation is, that Mr. Spencer’s 

* On Right and Wrong, p. 87. 


1v. | UTILITARIAN MORALITY. 183 


moral philosophy is hopelessly vitiated by his 
misapprehension of the subject wherewith such 
philosophy is concerned. Kthics is the science of 
our moral nature, and the question which les 
at the root of that science is this: What is 
the difference between virtue and vice, between 
right and wrong, between a good action and a 
bad? Mr. Spencer, as we have seen, holds that 
virtue and vice can be calculated in terms of 
pleasure and pain; that ‘‘ agreeable feeling ”’ 
supplies a definite standard of moral rectitude ; 
that the difference between a good and a.bad deed 
‘is in the results. It is true that in terms he 
repudiates the expediency morality, whether in 
the raw Benthamite form, or as cooked by Mr. 
Mill.* But that he is really involved in it is 
absolutely clear from his own words: ‘‘ I conceive 
it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, 
from the laws of life, what kinds of action 
necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what 
kinds to produce unhappiness.” ft For such is, 
totidem verbis, the utilitarian or expediency account 
of morals. It reduces ethics to eudemonism. 
‘Happiness, our being’s end and aim’’—that is 
one view, and Mr. Spencer holds it, interpreting 

* See the introduction to his Social Statics. 

+ Data of Bthics, § 21. Soin § 87. “ The purpose of ethical 
inquiry is to establish rules of right living; and... the rules 
of right living are those of which the total results, individual 
and general, direct and indirect, are most conducive to human 


happiness.” 


184 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


?) 


happiness as “‘ agreeable feeling.” ‘‘ Fiat justitia, 
pereat mundus ’”’ expresses quite another view, into 
which happiness does not enter as an element, nor 
are its laws determined by considerations of the 
eudemonistic order at all. Mr. Spencer’s morality 
is ego-altrwistic, limited by the idea of the social 
organism. ‘The transcendental morality rests upon 
a natural and permanent revelation of the reason, 
and social ethics is but a subordinate chapter of it. 
There is a whole universe between Mr. Spencer 
and genuine a prior: moralists. But the difference 
‘between Mr. Spencer and the elder schools of 
utilitarianism is unessential. ‘‘ Its deductions,’’ he 
says of his ethical ‘‘ science,”’ ‘‘ are to be recognized 
as laws of conduct, and are to be conformed to, 
irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or 
misery.’ * ‘*Direct.’”’ The word indicates the 
differentiation of Mr. Spencer’s method from 
Bentham’s. The estimate, according to Mr. 
Spencer, will be indirect, because it has been per- 
formed. for me by the tribe, and I have a ready 
reckoner in the brain. Again, Mr. Spencer lays 
down that happiness ought not to be the object of 
direct pursuit, because, if it is, we shall probably 
miss it:f a statement which I find it hard to 
reconcile with his fundamental proposition that 
we never can, or do, pursue anything but our own 
happiness. Jor either we seek virtue because it 
is pleasant, or not because it is pleasant. In the 
* Data of Ethics, § 21. + Ibid. § 91. 


rv.] PLEASURE AND VIRTUE. 185 


first case, we seek happiness alone. In the second, 
we do not seek happiness alone. But, finally,* he 
conciliates individual and general interests by 
means of “a higher egoistic satisfaction,’ exem- 
plified in the case of the love of parents for their 
children. Thus we come to happiness and agree- 
able feeling, after all, as the formal constituent of 
virtue. 

Now this resolution of the idea of good into the 
idea of pleasure, I take leave to call Mr. Spencer’s 
master-error. I will explain why I so call it. In 
the first place, Mr. Spencer’s account of the 
meaning of the words “good” and “bad,” is 
quite unphilosophical and wholly inadequate. I 
am far from denying that pleasure is a good. But 
it isa good of an entirely different nature from 
virtue. Good—bonwm—according to the school- 
men, to whose precise thought it is a relief to 
turn, if but for a moment, means that at which 
the human will can aim. And they allow of twof 
kinds of good: bonwm delectabile—pleasure, which 
may be either physical or mental; and bonum 
honestum—virtue. Both are legitimate objects of 
pursuit. To return, however, to Mr. Spencer. 


* Data of Ethics, § 92. 

} They speak also of bonum utile. We act propter bonwm 
utile when we act for the sake of some object which is useful 
as a means towards pleasure or virtue. Our absolute end will 
always be either bonwm honestum or bonum delectabile. Our 
relative or intermediate end will be bonum utile. 


186 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


Goodness, generally, means for him, as we have 
seen, adjustment of means to ends. And, in 
human life, in particular, the word means, for him, 
conduct that promotes the welfare of a man’s self, 
of his offspring, and of his fellows: actions which 
subserve life: which further ‘‘ complete living:” 
which produce, on the whole, a balance of pleasure 
over pain. Now Mr. Spencer is here the victim 
of a fallacy, so obvious that it is difficult to under- 
stand how he can have fallen into it. The good 
is pleasurable. True. But it is a curious logic 
which concludes, ergo pleasure is the test of good- 
ness. Pain ensues upon bad actions. ‘True again ; 
and in a far profounder sense than Mr. Spencer 
supposes. But how does it follow that ‘ what 
some call the badness of actions is ascribed to 
them solely for the reason that they entail pain, 
immediate or remote’ ?* <A conclusion which, 
Mr. Spencer judges, ‘‘no one can deny,” but 
which, as I venture to think, no consecutive 
reasoner can maintain. And can Mr. Spencer 
have really weighed his doctrine that the goodness 
of mutton and the goodness of man are essentially 
the same? that the one test of virtue always is | 
adjustment to the end of promoting human life ? 
Surely a little more consideration would have 
shown him that not all acts adapted to promote 
that end are ethically good; that the distinction 
drawn by metaphysicians between material and 


* Data of Ethics, § 11. 


Iv. | HIGHLY EVOLVED CONDUCT. 187 


formal goodness is well warranted. A case occurs 
to me, as I write, which may illustrate this simple 
proposition, if indeed illustration be necessary. 
An old man disinherited his son and left his for- 
tune to a hospital in order to punish the young 
man for marrying a young woman, with whom his 
septuagenarian parent had fallen in love. Un- 
doubtedly, the irate testator did much, by this 
disposition of his property, to improve the living 
of his fellow-men: undoubtedly he produced by it, 
on the whole, a balance of pleasure over pain. 
But will Mr. Spencer maintain that his deed of 
jealous vengeance was moral? Again, a man who 
gives to a crowded neighbourhood, in which he 
resides, a public park or garden, performs an act 
adjusted to achieve ‘totality of life in self, in 
offspring, and in fellow-men ’’—Mr. Spencer’s cri- 
terion of most highly evolved conduct. But if the 
donor be a fraudulent speculator, who so invests 
his money, by way of advertisement, in order to 
procure a character for public spirit, and thereby 
to ensnare more victims in his financial cobwebs, 
is his act ethical? Agreeable feeling the source 
and rule of right? But surely, as a matter of 
fact, nothing memorable in the moral order has 
ever been accomplished by men in whom the 
spring of action has been desire of agreeable 
feeling. It seems a well-nigh universal law that 
suffering, not pleasure, is not only the condition 
and the reward of goodness, but the most masterful 


188 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [cH. 


incentive to it.* LHvil that which causes pain to 
sentient beings? But surely many acts are evil 
which cause no pain at all, but only pleasure—and 
that of an intense kind—to sentient beings. That 
virtue, in our earthly experience—his only test— 
is a happiness producing conduct, is an assump- 
tion which Mr. Spencer, of all people, has no right 
to make. LEvolution, he teaches us, is a struggle 
for existence. Will he maintain that the morally 
good always survive in that struggle, and so are 
the fittest? What shall we say of those ‘‘ who 
loved, who suffered countless things, who battled 
for the true, the just’’—and failed? Of the lost 
causes, with their martyrs and prophets, which 
make up so much of history? Is it clear that 
alter apparent failure they triumphed, or will some 
day triumph, if they were morally good? How 
will Mr. Spencer show the necessary connection ? 
A priori? Heis debarred by his own principles. 
And experience—to say the least—gives an uncer- 
tain sound. 

Let us, however, suppose that such a connection 
as Mr. Spencer postulates does, in truth, exist 
between virtue and agreeable feeling. I ask, why 
must virtue be only the means and that feeling 


* So Mr. Carlyle, in words as true as noble: “Itis a calumny 
on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, | 


hope of pleasure, recompense—sugar plums of any kind in this | 
world or the next. In the meanest mortal there lies something 
nobler. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom are the allurements 


| 
that act on the heart of man.”—Lectures on Heroes, lect. u. | 
—) 


IV. | THE NATURE OF CONDUCT. 189 


the end? Why not consider virtue as the cause 
and happiness as the effect? Virtue, the final 
cause for which happiness exists, and the efficient 
cause which can alone produce it in perfection ? 
Grant that in the long run they are inseparable. 
still, we must ask, which is for the sake of the 
other? This is a point of capital importance. 
Mr. Spencer leaves it out altogether. We, who 
found ourselves on conscience, maintain that the 
motive determines the nature of conduct, and 
must be moral; whereas, the motive of pleasure, 
taken by itself, is neither moral nor immoral, but 
indifferent. Granting that the state of goodness 
is necessarily the state of perfect felicity, we 
maintain that the pursuit of such felicity not only 
does not constitute goodness, but does not even 
enter into its meaning. Granting that ‘‘ Honesty 
is the best policy,’’ we maintain that he who 
pursues it, merely as the best policy, is not honest. 
Granting that pleasure, of one kind or another, 
may be the consequence of well-doing, we main- 
tain that to make pleasure an end in itself, exclu- 
sive of the entirely different aspect of things which 
we call ‘‘ moral,” is not well-doing: that so long 
as we pursue pleasure absolutely because it is 
pleasant, and not because it is, under the circum- 
stances, right to choose pleasure, we cannot be 
acting ethically: nay, that virtue, sought for the 
sake of pleasure, ceases to be virtue. Mr. Spencer 
agrees with us so far as to reject the Benthamite 


190 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


calculation of pains and pleasures, while substi- 
tuting for it, chiefly, certain innate emotions due 
to associations of feelings in the remote past. He 
explains ‘‘the moral sentiment” by evolution. 
But the point is not as to the history of ‘the 
moral sentiment ’’—there I might, very likely, 
agree largely with him—but as to its essence, its 
nature. I say it is, here and now, a faculty, 
sur generis, having nothing to do with pleasures 
and pains, but only with right and wrong. If, 
however, the history is looked into, we shall find 
that Mr. Spencer, instead of explaining right and 
wrong, will be found to have degraded virtue into 
mechanism, and to have made of ethics a corollary 
from the Persistence of Force. That he likewise 
makes it impossible for us to think of ethics as 
such a corollary, I am well aware. But this is 
merely one of his many self-contradictions. My 
argument, however, is, that the concepts of mo- 
rality and mechanism are irreducible, and that 
Mr. Spencer’s purely mechanical explanation of 
good leaves out its essential element. Ti ASoviv 
TporauPavovtes vaTEepovpev Tayalod. 

My last observation upon Mr. Spencer’s ethical 
doctrine is this: that it is no less fatal to the con- 
cept of moral obligation than it is to the concept 
of moral goodness. ‘The first question in ethics is, 
What formally constitutes virtue? The second, 
Why should I practise virtue? Mr. Spencer’s 
reply to the second of these questions is of a piece 


iv.| THE DESIRABLE AND THE OBLIGATORY. 191 


with his reply to the first. The good, he tells us, 
is the pleasurable. And then, recurring to his 
favourite method, he assumes that men must and 
will follow the greatest happiness known to them. 
Nay, more, to help them in this excellent way, he 
instructs them, at some length, how the finest 
Altruism may be turned into the coarsest Egoism.* 
But really this assumption is quite as unwarrant- 
able as are those other primary assumptions of 
Mr. Spencer’s, at which we have already glanced. 
When you have demonstrated to others that such 
and such things will yield them agreeable feeling, 
neither you nor they, in truth, suppose for one 
minute, that you have laid upon them the obliga- 
tion of pursuing those things. A convicted thief 
in a London police-court, not long ago, after 
receiving from the magistrate a homily, and a 
sentence, turned to his ‘pals,’ and addressed 
them on this wise. ‘‘Be virtuous, and, as his 
Worship says, youll be happy: but you'll have 
devilish little fun.” It is a truer reading of human 
nature than Mr. Spencer’s. His ‘‘morality’’ can 
but counsel. It cannot command. Its highest 
appeal is a prudential recommendation. But the 
desirable is one thing. The obligatory is another. 
It is the distinction between ‘‘ may ” and ‘‘ must :”’ 
or rather, to put it more accurately, between 
‘“moigen” and ‘‘sollen.”” To say that men are 
bound to follow pleasure, is—I must be pardoned 
* See chap. xiv. of his Data of Ethics. 


192 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


the word—nonsense. It is double distilled non- 
sense 1n Mr. Spencer’s system of physiological 
fatality, where power of choice—“ arbitrement,”’ 
Milton calls it—does not really come in at all, 
where our volitions are accounted as merely facts 
of a certain order, absolutely governed by certain 
physical laws, which we cannot help obeying. 
Evolution, as expounded by Mr. Spencer, effaces 
all difference of nature between beings, and dis- 
tinguishes them only according to the degree of 
their development and complexity. It is abso- 
Iutely fatal to the idea of the moral person, 
endowed, consciously endowed, with the power of 
freely choosing a better or a worse, both equally 
possible, and responsible for his choice. But 
without personality, liberty, and responsibility 
there can be no ethical obligation. And, in truth, 
in Mr. Spencer’s ethics, duty is merely a name for 
prefit, advantage, pleasure. 

But whose profit, advantage, pleasure? Mr. 
Spencer thinks he can point to ‘ certain principles, 
in the nature of things, which causally determine 
welfare.” * ‘The science of these is what he means 
by ethics. He confesses, however—as of course 
he must—that individual welfare does not always 
coincide with social welfare. ‘‘ The two ends,” he 
tells us, euphemistically, ‘‘ are not harmonious at 
the outset: though he promises their concilia- 
tion in his Millennium. At present, however, 

* Data of Ethics, § 60. + Ibid. § 49. 


IV.} WHY THE “MUST.79 193 


“the life of the social organism must, as an end, 
rank above the lives of its units;’’* “the welfare 
of the society, as a whole,’ must be ‘‘put in the 
foreground.” + But why the “ must’? Why 
ought the individual to sacrifice himself to the 
organism? It may be profitable, advantageous, 
pleasurable for the organism that he should do so. 
It is assuredly most unprofitable, disadvantageous, 
and unpleasurable for the man himself. No prin- 
ciple causally determining his welfare can be cited 
here. And self-sacrifice is outside the sphere of 
Spencerian ethics. Here, again, Mr. Spencer has 
nothing to fall back upon but his own ipse dizit. 
He tells us that the ‘‘ deductions” of his ethical 
science ‘‘are to be recognized as laws of conduct, 
and are to be conformed to, irrespective of a direct 
estimate of pleasures and pains.’f ‘Are’? 
Why? Why must I conform to Mr. Spencer’s 
‘‘deductions’’? They have to be confronted with 
the struggle for existence. They may, possibly, 
point to what is advantageous for the tribe. But, 
if I follow them, J may not survive. Why, then, 
should I follow them? What is meant by saying 
it is wrong not to follow them ? Wrong, in the 
old sense, does not come in at all. With Mr. 
Spencer it merely means, inexpedient for the tribe. 
But why should I consider the tribe? Assuredly, 
in the struggle for existence, the tribe will not 
* Data of Ethics, § 49. 
t+ Ibid. t Ibid. § 21. The italics are mine. 
0 


194 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. (CH. 


consider me. ‘Nay, nay,’’ Mr. Spencer insists, 
‘in subordinating your own immediate advantage 
to the future advantage of the tribe, you gratify 
certain emotions the result of organized experiences 
within you.” But the facts do not bear out this 
assertion. How many men are there in whom 
such emotions are not felt at all?—in whom 
neither introspection, nor analysis, discloses their 
existence? And even if they do exist, where is 
the obligation to postpone to them other emotions, 
certainly, as arule, much more masterful ? But, 
in truth, the discussion of this question with Mr. 
Spencer is idle as the fighting of those who beat 
the air. Declaring, as he does in terms, that we 
have no real power of choice, that free-will is an 
objective and subjective delusion,” he does but 
mock us, when he calls upon us to elect this 
or that course of action. In fact, liberty of voli- 
tion is absolutely irreconcilable with the physical 
fatalism which is of the essence of his doctrine: 
or, as he prefers to express it, ‘with the beneficent 
necessity displayed in the evolution of the corre- 
spondence between the organism and the environ- 
ment.” T 

The truth is, that to the whole Utilitarian 
school, in which Mr. Spencer must assuredly be 
classed, the facts of our moral consciousness pre- 
sent quite insuperable difficulties. Bentham pro- 
posed to get rid of those difficulties by the simple 

* Principles of Psychology, §§ 219, 220. + Ibid. § 220. 


Iv. | AN INNER FACT. 195 


method of banishing the word “ ought” from the 
vocabulary of morals: and by ceasing to talk 
about duties.* Mr. Spencer, less boldly, endea- 
veurs to explain away the ethical sense by deriving 
it from the instincts of selfishness, sympathy, imi- 
tation, disciplined by the experiences of the count- 
less generations who have bequeathed to us their 
slowly developed nervous organization. Such are 
the unmoral factors from which he seeks to evolve 
the commanding sanctity of Right, the stern be- 
nignity of Duty. One cannot help wondering 
whether Mr. Spencer, absorbed as he has been in 
the spinning of his hypotheses, has ever found 
time seriously to reflect upon the real significance 
of the moral ‘“ought.’’ Unqualified obligation is 
a fact of the world of consciousness. From con- 
science we receive dictates. From sense, impres- 
sions. ‘The Imperative of Duty is Categorical : 
that is primary and unconditioned. How, then, 
can it spring from the conditioned ? How can it 
be derivative? Mr. Spencer’s account of it is 
wholly inadequate. He leaves out the chief facts 
which call for explanation. Mr. Spencer, appa- 
rently, sees no difference between the counsel of 
prudence and the mandate of conscience: between 
regret for a lost opportunity, and remorse for a 
violated duty. ‘‘ Here stand I,” said Luther at 
the Diet of Worms: ‘‘I can do no other.” There 
is a whole universe between the feeling of the indis- 
* Deontology, vol. 1. pp. 32, 40. 


196 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


pensableness of the means, if we would attain the 
end, and the feeling that obedience to the voice 
within is itself the end, to be followed ‘‘in the 
scorn of consequence.” You may as reasonably 
explain the ethical ‘‘ ought” by the mechanism of 
the common pump, as by the mechanism of man’s 
nervous structure. 


It appears to me, then, that “the fitter regu- 
lative system,’’ which Mr. Spencer proposes to 
substitute for the old data of ethics, is a mere 
abortion of moral philosophy ; just as his doctrine 
of The Unknowable is a mere abortion of natural 
theology. I do not deny Mr. Spencer's speculative 
ingenuity. I am far from questioning his positions 
that animated nature, in general, has risen from a 
lower to a higher stage: that, in particular, man’s 
whole being has been derived from the universe, as 
a whole, in an orderly and natural manner. But 
the question is as to the cause of this progress. 
Again I do not doubt—who does ?—that a nervous 
structure may give rise to tendencies which become 
hereditary. But this is a very different thing from 
saying that the primary principles of reason are 
the product of brain or nervous action. Once 
more. I have nothing to except against Mr. 
Spencer’s doctrine that the subjective organ of 
ethical knowledge, and the objective formula of 


Iv. | AN IMPOSSIBLE MORALITY. 197 


the moral idea, are both in a permanent state 
of becoming. But that does not deprive conscience, 
or the moral law, of their imperative character, 
for each act recognized by me as obligatory: it 
does not, in the least, imply the destruction of 
ethical liberty, properly understood. The idea of 
duty is one thing: the nomenclature of duties is 
quite another. When Mr. Spencer advocates a 
‘scientific morality’? he means not a morality 
independent of dogmatic theology — for that 
independence, as has been seen, I strenuously 
contend—but a morality independent of meta- 
physics. And such a morality is impossible, for 
the science of Doing rests on the science of Being. 
What Mr. Spencer means by scientific morality 
is a morality based on the experimental sciences. 
His object, in that department of his philosophy 
which we have last considered, is to find a justi- 
fication in physics for utilitarian ethics: to dis- 
cover the rules of human action in the properties 
of matter. It appears to me that the result at 
which he arrives is the annihilation of the moral 
idea: while, the more closely we examine his argu- 
ment, the more abundantly shall we find his 
reasoning nonsequacious, his terminology shifting, 
his inductions superficial and hazardous, his 
assumptions colossal, and his explanations mere 
descriptions. Mr. Spencer is a realist who affects 
to deal with the 1e whole range of human knowledge : 

to give us ‘a comprehensive view of truth in all 


198 SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. [ CH. 


its branches.” But even within the province of 
physics he falls into grave error: while in the 
methods of metaphysics he is obviously unversed. 
‘¢ Given,” he tells us, ‘‘the Persistence of Force, 
and given the various derivative laws of Force, 
and there has to be shown . . . how there neces- 
sarily result the more numerous and involved traits 
exhibited by organic and superorganic existences : 
how an organism is evolved? what is the genesis 
of human intelligence? whence social progress 
arises?”?* This has to be shown. Yes. But 
Mr. Spencer, with all his perseverance and energy, 
has not shown it, in all his vast volumes. He has 
not solved a single one of these problems. 

Let us, however, suppose that he has, in truth, 
exhibited the simplest elements of the universe, 
the ultimate principles of things: that he has 
reduced all of which we have knowledge to his 
one law—the Persistence of Force, under various 
transformations: that he has demonstrated our 
nescience of everything but our sensations, and 
has established our duty—‘‘ our highest duty ’’— 
of believing in The Unknowable, as the objective 
cause of our sensations. Does this Scientific 
Agnosticism, after all, constitute a real explanation 
of The Great Enigma— Je, d’ou, ou, pour, com- 
ment?’? The problem of individuation would 
remain the same. ‘‘ Pourquoi y a-t-il quelque 
chose?’’ asked d’Alembert. And he could only 

* First Principles, § 193. 


IV. | INADEQUATE TO LIFE. 199 


answer ‘‘'Terrible question.” Does Mr. Spencer 
even so much as pretend to tell us why anything 
exists? Why it is itself, and not something else ? 
Does he bring us any nearer to a constituent 
explanation of things? It is in vain that he 
seeks, by grocer’s scales and carpenter's plummet- 
line, to reduce them to averages and mechanism. 
His portentous generalities, with their integrations 
and disintegrations, leave the mystery of ‘the 
immeasurable world” precisely where they found 
it. ‘* We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love.” 
Can any one live by Mr. Spencer’s philosophy ? 
Its inadequacy to life is its condemnation. 


“Lass das nur stehn! Dabei wird’s niemand wohl. 
Ks ist ein Zauberbild, ist leblos, ein Idol.” 


The key to the problem of existence is not sensa- 
tion, but personality. And itis to be sought, not 
in the charnel-house of Physics, but in the spiritual 
temple of Reason. 


CHAPTER V. 
RATIONAL THEISM. 


We have now examined the substitutes for 
Theism offered by Atheism and Agnosticism. 
The next step in our inquiry is, whether Theism 
is, in fact, so hopelessly discredited as is fre- 
quently and confidently alleged. It will be re- 
membered that in this volume I am addressing 
myself not to those who believe in God, but to 
those who do not: an exceeding great multitude, 
as I fear, who have been infected by the intel- 
lectual epidemic of the age. The great majority 
of them, perhaps, could give no coherent account 
of their scepticism. M. Renan has somewhere 
truly observed that ‘ few people have a right to 
reject Christianity.”” Such rejection is, most fre- 
quently, the result of indulgence in what George 
Eliot called ‘“‘the unlimited right of private hazi- 
ness,’ which many people, apparently, consider 
the most precious portion of their intellectual 
heritage. It is a sort of mental morbidezza, and 
has become the fashion. At the beginning of the 
century Rivarol pronounced impiety the greatest 


on,.V: | AN INTELLECTUAL EPIDEMIC. 201 


of indiscretions. Now ‘society’? not only tole- 
rates, but even relishes, its most full-flavoured 
manifestations. Fifty years ago, Emerson noted 
‘‘nolite bows to God in the newspapers”’ as an 
English trait. Now, the one thing which our 
journals, delivering their ‘‘ brawling judgments un- 
ashamed, on all things, all day long,” are agreed 
upon, is to ignore ‘‘the Judge of all the earth.” 
Sir Robert Peel said, upon a well-known occasion, 
“Take my word for it, it is not prudent to trust 
yourself to 2 man who does not believe in God and 
in a future life after death.” What would Mr. 
Gladstone now say to such a sentiment? Nay, 
how many members are there of either House of 
Parliament, who would endorse it? But I need 
not dwell further upon what must be plain to 
every competent observer. Let me rather go on 
to inquire what is the special cause of this 
movement of contemporary thought. 

It seems to me largely due to the stupendous 
advance of the experimental sciences, usually and 
justly reckoned a distinctive glory of the nine- 
teenth century, and to the absorbing devotion to 
them so generally displayed. And this is natural 
enough. For those sciences dwell in the sphere 
of physical uniformity. They are nothing but a 
knowledge of the relative. Hence the tendency 
of professors of physics—the faculty of thought 
being, like the dyer’s hand, subdued to what it 
works in—to shut out the idea of a First Cause ; 


202 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


a tendency described with equal vigour and ac- 
curacy by the great English poet of the last 
century,-in words breathing true prophetic in- 
spiration : 


“ Make Nature still encroach upon His plan, 
And shove Him off as far as e’er we can, 
Thrust some-mechanic cause into His place, 
Or bind in matter and diffuse in space, 

Or, at one bound, o’erleaping all Elis laws, 
Make God man’s image: man the final cause.”’ 


Existence presents two problems—the how and 
the why. ‘To explain the how of things, we must 
discover those uniformities of sequence or co-ordi- 
nation which we call their laws. That is the 
province of physics. And with all beyond that, 
physical science, as such, is not concerned. It 
traces for us links—more or fewer—in the chain 
of phenomena. But it cannot go farther than 
that uniform succession of antecedents and con- 
sequents. It cannot reach the innermost founda- 
tion of things, nor confer upon us a knowledge of 
their essence, or of their origin. It can no more 


reveal to us the source of the movement innate 
in the molecule, than it can explain the dialectic 
evolution of thought. These problems belong to 
a different order. They lie within the domain, 
not of experimental physics, but of pure reason. 
That everything which happens must have a 
cause, and that there is not an infinity of secon- 
dary causes, are the two indispensable postulates 


v.4 THE CATEGORY OF CAUSALITY. 203 


of all philosophy. The category of causality is the 
sine qua non of all ratiocination : we cannot think 
without it. And the idea of cause is entirely meta- 
physical. To employ the word merely to denote 
antecedents, to define it as the relation of objects 
to objects, of impressions to impressions, of pheno- 
mena to phenomena, is simply to empty it of its 
real meaning, which is the dynamical. ‘“‘ Cause,”’ 
Dr. Martineau has well observed, ‘‘is not the 
relation of phenomena to one another:” it is 
‘the relation of phenomena to something which 
is not phenomenal but real.” As a matter of 
fact, it is from our own energy, as personal agents, 
that we gain the idea of cause. ‘T'he only type of 
causation known to us is volitional. ‘'o this one 
type ‘“‘we are absolutely limited; ... and so, 
behind every event, whatever its seat and what- 
ever its form, must post, near or far, the same 
idea taken from our own voluntary activity. 
This, it is plain, is tantamount to saying that all 
which happens in nature has One kind of cause, 
and that cause a Will like ours;” * causa ultima, 
sola vera causa.t |It appears to me most neces- 
sary at the present day to insist upon this, for, as 
I had occasion to show at length, some time ago, 

* A Study of Religion, vol. 1. p. 230. 

} Aristotle, in the Twelfth Book of his Metaphysics, argues 
from the law, order, and progress visible in the phenomenal 
universe that the First Cause must be evépyea, and this simply 


and purely. The Latin scholastics translate “ Energy” by 
Actus Purus. 


204 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


in controversy with Professor Huxley,* contem- 
porary masters of physical science often display a 
desire, and more than a desire, to bring every- 
thing within its boundaries. Perhaps no one has 
exhibited this characteristic more signally than 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, who excludes free sponta- 
neity from all spheres of life, and imposes every- 
where the same mechanical ‘‘ necessity ’’—what 
he is pleased to call necessity—which rules in the 
domain of physical or chemical forces. No one 
acquainted with my writings will suppose me 
likely to contravene the authority of experimental 
science within its proper department. But I feel 
deeply that one of the most crying needs of our 
time is to repel the aggressions of its professors 
upon provinces of thought absolutely beyond their 
jurisdiction ; to resist their restriction of our ideas 
to generalizations of phenomena: their erection of 
experimental observation into the sole criterion 
of certitude. Most fruitful is this method in the 
interpretation of organic and inorganic nature: 
how fruitful the wonderful growth of the physical 
sciences during the present century sufficiently 
shows. But what are we to say of the application 
of that method to the intellect and its operations ? 
‘Oh! psychology, be upon thy guard against 
physics!’’ exclaimed Maine de Biran fifty years 
ago. But psychology has been quite unable to 
repel the rude assault. By how many writers of 


* See On Right and Wrong, p. 243. 


v. | THE PHYSIOLOGICAL METHOD. 205 


great repute is the soul now quietly assumed to 
be a group of phenomena—what they call phe- 
nomena—which may be assimilated to purely 
material facts, depending upon one another by an 
unbroken chain? I am far from denying that 
there is a true, a close analogy, between physical 
and intellectual laws, both being, as I judge, 
manifestations of the same Keason. What I am 
now speaking of is the application—misapplication 
—of the physiological method to the mental and 
moral order: the claim that purely metaphysical 
questions shall be determined by the laws of 
matter. In every department of thought we see 
the same tendency. Thus, in history, first prin- 
ciples are quite abandoned by an influential 
school. The business of the historian, they tell 
us, ig not to judge, but to understand: ‘‘ to seize 
the reason of each thing in its necessity.” And 
so history is severed from philosophy, and becomes 
a mere branch of physics. Nay, the physiological 
method is applied even to divinity, and we have 
“scientific”? theology, with Strauss, Bauer, and 
Ewald as its professors. The mental habit of 
which I am writing is curiously and unconsciously 
illustrated by the prevailing custom of using the 
word ‘‘science”’ as a synonym for physics. Pro- 
fessor Huxley, as I have pointed out,* expressly 
identifies the growth of ‘‘ science” with the ex- 
tension of ‘‘natural causation,’ and fully ac- 


* On Right and Wrong, p. 256. 


206 RATIONAL THEISM. (CH. 


quiesces in the tendency to reduce ‘‘ all scientific 
problems,’’ except those which are purely mathe- 
matical, to questions of molecular physics. ‘‘ Of 
course,’ Mr. Mill has observed, ‘‘we can never 
know anything but phenomena.’’ | If this is so, 
then, equally of course, there is an end of meta- 
physics. Then is the prediction of Pope verified : 
‘Philosophy, that leaned on heaven before, 
Sinks to her second cause, and is no more.”’ 

Yes; that is precisely how it fares with philo- 
sophy in the hands of these thinkers, whose 
philosophical culture is usually not very profound. 
They refuse to acknowledge that anything which 
has physical effects can have a hyperphysical 
source. Their main position is the rejection of 
the supersensuous. In what I am now about to 
write I shall keep specially in view this special 
character of the antitheistic current of thought in 
our days, for in its various forms, I think, will be 
found to work one and the selfsame spirit. It would 
be mere waste of my time and of my readers’ for 
me to go over ground already trodden by thinkers 
—undervalued only by such as from defect of will 
or intelligence have not mastered them—who, 
in former days, have vindicated the Divine con- 
cept. But the old-world answers may suffice for 
old-world objections, and yet be quite inadequate 
to meet that contemporary mode of thinking which 
especially militates against the theistic idea. Let 
us see, then, first, what are the grounds now 


v..| WHY WE SHOULD NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. 207 


specially urged why we, the heirs of all the ages, 
should abandon the Theism which we have been 
wont to esteem the most precious portion of our 
inheritance. I shall afterwards proceed to inquire 
what Reason, freely exercised according to the 
methods specially prized in these days, and with- 
out any reference to systems of religion professing 
to be revealed, makes evident, unless we stultify its 
teaching, concerning the existence and character 
of the Supreme Reality. 


Now, the last considerable contribution made in 
this country to antitheistic literature 1s, I suppose, 
Mr. Cotter Morison’s work, The Service of Man. 
Great and general was the jubilation wherewith 
its appearance was hailed by those who shared its 
gifted author’s opinions. Mr. John Morley, in 
particular, unless my memory is at fault, solemnly 
blessed and approved it as ‘‘an epoch-making 
book.’ Let us then turn to its pages to learn 
what are the latest reasons given to the world why 
men ought not to believe in God. Mr. Morison 
did not, indeed, bring out of his treasure-house 
anything absolutely new. I find no vestige of 
original thought in his volume. His object ap- 
pears to have been to exhibit, in their most per- 
suasive form, the most formidable arguments of the 
antitheistic Rabbis at whose feet he had himself 


208 RATIONAL THEISM. [CH. 


sat. The special value of his performance lies 
in the ability with which he acquitted himself 
of this task. No one can be insensible to the 
lucidity and vigour of his style. No one can deny 
to his pages the higher merit of transparent 
candour and unfeigned earnestness. With much 
of his work I am not here concerned. I confine 
myself entirely to his case against Theism in 
general. He expressly tells us that if men will 
go on believing in God, it is ‘‘in spite of science 
and the laws of consciousness.’’* Let us see, 
then, what reasons in support of the antitheistic 
argument ‘‘ science and the laws of consciousness ”’ 


supply. 


And first as to science—by which Mr. Morison, 
of course, meant’ physics. What arguments 
against Theism do the latest developments of 
physical science present? After diligent search I 
find only one set forth by Mr. Morison in any 
definite and precise shape. Let me give it in his 
own words. ‘The early glimpses of the marvels 
of Nature afforded by modern science,” he writes, 
‘undoubtedly were favourable to natural theology 
in the first instance. Knowledge revealed so many 
wonders which had not been suspected by igno- 
rance, that a general increase of reverence and 


* "Page 52. 


v.] FINAL CAUSES. 209 


awe for the Creator was the natural though not 
very logical consequence. But a deeper philo- 
sophy, or rather biology, has disturbed the satis- 
faction with which ‘the wisest and most exquisite 
ends’ were once regarded. It is now known that 
for one case of successful adaptation of means to 
ends in the animal world, there are hundreds of 
failures. If organs which serve an obvious end 
justify the assumption of an intelligent designer, 
what are we to say of organs which serve no ends 
at all, but are quite useless or meaningless?” * 
Now this is very moderately put. I confess if I 
had been in Mr. Morison’s place I should have 
stated it much more strongly. The argument 
from the apparent waste, failure, nay, blundering, 
in Nature would seem at first sight to disprove the 
old notion of finality much relied upon by Theistic 
apologists in former times. Ido not speak of the 
doctrine of final causes so inimitably expounded by 
Dr. Pangloss: ‘‘Observe that noses have been made 
to wear spectacles, and so we have spectacles. Legs 
have been manifestly framed to be clad in stock- 
ings, wherefore we have stockings. Stones have 
been formed to be hewn and made into chdteauz, 
and so monseigneur has a very fine chdteaw; and 
pigs having been made to be eaten, we eat pork 
all the year round.” Ispeak not of this teleology, 
but of that which Voltaire himself considered to 
be absolutely evident. ‘‘It seems to me,’’ he 


* Page 21. 


210 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


writes, ‘that one must be mad | forcené| to deny 
that stomachs are made to digest, eyes to see, ears 
to hear. . . . When effects are invariably the same 
in every place and at every period, when these 
uniform effects are independent of the beings to 
which they belong, then there is visibly a final 
cause.” * But now we are told that the notion 
of finality is banished by contemporary science as 
a relic of superstition. Functions are pronounced 
to be a result, not an end. As M. de Candolle 
will have it, “The birds fly because they have 
wings; but a true naturalist will never say, “The 
birds have wings to fly with.’’’ Nature, we are 
assured, always acts without prevision of an end. 
It is mere monotonous mechanism elaborating all 
organisms after one plan—otften unsuccessfully — 
the variations being merely the result of environ- 
ment. Not intelligence, not design, but fortuitous- 
ness or fatality, is the real explanation. Where 
former generations saw divine wisdom—“ God 
geometrises,’ said Plato—we, whose eyes have 
been opened, see only blind groping. That is, 
indeed, the message delivered to the world by 
Physicus in his well-known work. What is the 
substance of his book but this ?—I believed in God 


* The whole of the article, ‘“‘ Causes Finales,” in the Dic- 
tionnaire Philosophique, from which I am quoting, is well worth 
reading. It is a model of lucidity and masculine commonsense. 
To say that it is excessively amusing also, is merely to say that 
it is Voltaire’s. 


v. | THE ARGUMENT FROM FAILURE. 211 


on account of the argument from design—all other 
proofs seemed worthless—until I read Darwin, and 
then that broke down too. Well, upon this matter 
I shall express myself with absolute candour. If 
any man can still argue, solely from the phenomena 
of the physical world, to an absolutely wise and 
all-powerful First Cause, by all means let him. 
I cannot. But to affirm that the progress of 
physical science has disproved, or tends to dis- 
prove, thought, order, finality in the universe, is 
quite unintelligible to me. I find Mr. Darwin’s 
books teeming with evidence of plan, adaptation, 
that is, purpose in nature. But purpose, ac- 
cording to Kant’s masterly analysis, implies an 
intelligent will, in possession of principles or rules 
of conduct, and directed to a specific end. The 
argument from design may have been pressed to 
absurd lengths. The argument from failure is 
in itself absurd. In strictness, it must be said 
that there is no such thing as failure known to us, 
because there may be always ends which are hidden 
from our eyes. We can affirm order, because that 
is a thing positive. But to affirm disorder, absolute 
and final, is ike attempting to prove a negative. 
Moreover, there is this weighty fact telling for the 
divine induction: that, as our knowledge of nature 
advances, more purpose appears. Take one familiar 
instance only. Where could waste apparently more 
utterly senseless have been discovered than in 
those vast buried forests in which solar rays have 


212 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


been imprisoned since the Secondary Epoch? For 
two millions of years this profuse and seemingly 
purposeless growth has lain in the earth, entombed 
and idle. It is now the fuel which gladdens us 
with light and heat, and which is the chief factor 
in our material civilization. Again, a rudimentary 
organ may be useless now, but destined to use in 
after ages; a dwarfed survival, useless now, may 
have had its use in bygone times. But I decline 
to take theories borrowed from the economical 
schools of the day as the measure of finality in 
the universe. I cannot accept the standard sup- 
plied by utilitarianism, or * pig philosophy,” as the 
rule of all things in heaven and earth. Utility? 
The word requires definition. Useful for what ? 
Beauty is surely a sufficient justification for the 
works of “‘ Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand.” 
Wisely does the poet speak of the “ liberal appli- 
cations’? which lie in her bosom, as in the soul of 
the artist. Of how many of her productions does 
his caution hold good :— 
“So ’twere to cramp its use if I 
Should hook it to some useful end.” 

Once more. The doctrine of organic evolution, 
which, taken by itself, is an admirable revelation 
go I must account it—of an universal law, does 
not in the least conduct us to the necessity of 
modern phenomenists as the true explanation of 
the universe. Everywhere reigns one law: a law 
of progress, of development, of perpetual becoming ; 


v.] NECESSITY. 213 


therefore there is no First Cause whence that law 
issues: there is only necessity. An admirable 
argument indeed, issuing, fitly in an équivoque. 
Necessity is a question-begging word. Is blind 
necessity meant? Such necessity assuredly could 
not produce the diversity, the succession, the return 
of phenomena. But if necessity 1s not blind it is 
merely another name for law: and law imphes an 
abiding and unchanging self, a spiritual principle. 
The truth is that evolution is a modal, not a 
causal theory of creation, and it is quite com- 
patible with the hypothesis of divine finality while 
it is quite incompatible with the old mechanical 
theory of nature. But further: The question of 
a First Cause is one with which the physicist, as 
such, is not concerncd. His domain is the sphere 
of sense perception. The science with which he 
has to do explains to us the materials of the 
inorganic world. It unfolds to us the movements 
which succeed one another there in a definite series. 
But that is all it can reveal to us of the elements 
of life. Physical science, as I have already in- 
sisted, knows nothing of the cause which formed 
the first cell, which developed therefrom the 
organism and which rules its evolution. Physicists 
may, if they will, call that cause force; but they 
are unable to tell you what force is. This has 
been frankly confessed by one whose words, upon 
such subjects, carry great and deserved weight. 
“Tf you ask,’’ writes Professor Tyndall, in his 


214 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


Fragments of Science, ‘‘whence is this matter 
of which we have been discoursing, who or 
what divided it into molecules, who or what 
impressed upon them the necessity of running 
into organic forms [the physicist] has no answer. 
Science ’’—the Professor means, of course, physical 
sclence—‘‘is mute in reply to these questions.” 
Yes. We must go elsewhere if we want an answer 
to them. Physical science is not concerned with 
them. They he outside her domain. 


So much upon the antitheistic argument from 
the latest developments of physical science. But 
‘tarry a little, there is something else,” Mr. 
Morison admonishes us. Consider the argument 
from the laws of consciousness. Has not Mr. 
Herbert Spencer laid it down that they present 
a quite insurmountable obstacle to Theistic belief ? 
Well, it must be admitted that he has. It is 
a favourite, not to say a well-worn thesis with 
that master. Thus in his Principles of Psychology 
he writes, ‘‘ The antithesis of subject and object, 
never to be transcended while consciousness lasts, 
renders impossible all knowledge of the Ultimate 
Reality in which subject and object are united.” * 
Thus in his Essays he argues, ‘‘ Mental analysis. 
shows that the product of thought is, in all cases, 


* § 979. 


v.] THE LAWS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 215 


a relation identified as such or such”’—a singular 
statement upon which I shall have something to 
say later on—‘‘ and that therefore Being, in itself, 
out of relation, is unthinkable.”* And in an 
article contributed by him in 1885 to one of the 
Magazines, he has abounded in the same sense. 
Mr. Morison quotes, with much satisfaction, a 
few pages of it,t which he evidently regarded as 
unanswerable. The gist of them is that we 
can believe in a divine consciousness only by 
refraining from thinking what is meant by con- 
sciousness, and that the condition of believing 
in a divine will is similar. ‘‘ Whoever conceives 
of any other will than his own,” Mr. Spencer 
urges, “‘must do so in terms of his own will, 
which is the sole will directly known to him, 
all other wills being only inferred. But will, as 
such, is conscious, if it presupposes a motive, a 
prompting desire of some kind; absolute indiffer- 
ence excludes the conception of will. Moreover, 
will, as implying a prompting desire, connotes 
some end contemplated as one to be achieved, 
and ceases with the achievement of it ; some other 
will referring to some other end taking its place. 
That is to say, will, like emotion, necessarily 
supposes a series of states of consciousness. The 
conception of a divine will, derived from the 
human will, involves like it, localization in space 


* Vol. ili. p. 258. 
+ See The Service of Man, p. AA, 


216 RATIONAL THEISM. [CH. 


aud time; the willing of each end excluding from 
consciousness, for an interval, the willing of other 
ends, and therefore being inconsistent with that 
omnipresent activity which simultaneously works 
out an infinity of ends. It is the same with the 
ascription of intelligence. Not to dwell on the 
serlality and limitation implied as before, we may 
note that intelligence, as alone conceivable by us, 
presupposes existence independent of it and objec- 
tive to it. It is carried on in terms of changes 
primarily wrought by alien activities—the impres- 
sions generated by things beyond consciousness, 
and the ideas derived from such impressions. ‘To 
speak of an intelligence which exists in the absence 
of all such alien activities is to use a meaningless 
word.” When I read these and similar pronounce- 
ments of Mr. Herbert Spencer, I am reminded 
of the wise admonition of Dale the Quaker to his 
son-in-law, Robert Owen. ‘‘Thee should be very 
right, Robert, for thee’s very positive.” But is 
this eminent person very right? I venture to 
think, on the contrary, that he is very wrong. 
Mr. Spencer’s argument, as set out in the passage 
which I have quoted from him, and which I 
believe presents it very completely, appears to me 
to be vitiated radically and hopelessly, first, by 
his utter misconception of what is meant by the 
faculty of abstraction; secondly, by his failure to 
apprehend the essential nature of intellect; and 
lastly, by his assumptions of the most arbitrary 


v. | THE ULTIMATE REALITY. 217 


a prior’ description, concerning the Ultimate 
Reality, whose existence and attributes reason 
seeks in some degree to know. 

Let us take the last point first. Who, I would 
ask Mr. Spencer, asserts that subject and object 
are transcended in the Ultimate Reality? Why 
should they be? Does transcending mean identi- 
fying one with the other? Again, what is there 
to hinder an ideal distinction of subject and object 
in the Hternal Being? Such distinction is all that 
intellect requires for its existence. And, as a 
matter of fact, so far from being denied, or tran- 
scended, by theists, it has supphed the philo- 
sophical foundation of the Christian doctrine of 
the Trinity since the later Platonists. Again, 
ought we to begin by defining the Ultimate Reality 
as that in which subject and object are tran- 
scended? Must we not take for our proper 
starting-point in theology—the science of God— 
as in every other science, facts, viewed in the light 
of first principles? And do not these compel us 
to infer, not all at once, an Ultimate Reality, but 
a superhuman intelligence? I do not think Mr. 
Spencer will deny such an intelligence to be 
possible, to be conceivable—nay, to be admissible. 
Well, then, let me ask him to consider the con- 
sequences of admitting it. What we are seeking 
is an Ultimate Reality, which shall be Hternal 
Consciousness; not a reality which has no attri- 
butes. No, no, Mr. Spencer objects; the Ultimate 


218 RATIONAL THEISM. (cH. 


Reality can have no attributes. Why? I will ask 
him. Because, he replies—this is what his argu- 
ment strictly amounts to—because the Ultimate 
Reality is merely Being, and indifferent to attri- 
butes. Now, here I beg the reader’s most careful 
attention. The Being of which Mr. Spencer speaks 
is in truth only the notion of Being; it is a pure 
abstraction arrived at by taking no account of attri- 
butes; not by denying them, but by prescinding 
from them; and, as such, it does not exist, nor can 
exist. Pure Being, in Mr. Spencer’s sense, is an 
idol of the den; a logical abstraction; or, as they 
would say in the schools, an ens rationis: and no 
abstraction exists as an abstraction. It exists in 
the concrete, and therefore with what we call 
attributes. Nor are these attributes—as Mr. 
Spencer seems to imagine—things added to it, 
and detractable from it; they are the thing itself, 
which, viewed in different lights, has now this 
predicated of it, now that. Mr. Spencer’s Being 
is a mere notion, founded indeed upon any and 
every reality, but not itself real. It is ens abstrac- 
tissimum ; the most abstract of abstractions. But 
what we are seeking as the foundation of things 
is the Ultimate Reality, and that must be ens 
realissimum, independent, self-existent, of which 
endless attributes, or aspects—that is to say 
imperfect representations of the whole—may be 
predicated. Mr. Spencer might have learnt all 
this from the first book of Spinoza’s Hthics, where 


v. | BEING AND NOTHING. 219 


it 1s irrefragably established. I note in passing 
that Hegel, too, came very near this verity on 
which I have been insisting, when he identified 
Being and Nothing, although by a singular aberra- 
tion, he turned aside from it to wanderings long 
and devious as those of Ulysses. He should have 
said that Being in the abstract is nothing in the 
concrete, or that Being in general is nothing in 
particular. So much must serve as to the first 
and third points. Lastly, as to the essential 
nature of intellect, what is it, I would ask Mr. 
Spencer, but to distinguish between the accidents 
and the substance of a thing or notion, and to 
arrive at the substance? Hence in reflecting on 
itself it perceives that while an object, or terminus 
im quo, is necessary to its operations, the succes- 
sion of objects, or the reception of them from 
without, is not. Hence, too, it perceives that the 
higher the intellect, the wider become its intui- 
tions, the fewer its reasonings, and the larger its 
affirmations. Thence we conclude by an unin- 
peachable logical process to the nature of an 
eternal, self-dependent intellect. And theré Mr. 
Spencer will find the answer to his long-drawn 
argument. Mr. Spencer tells us, ‘‘ My intellect is 
dependent on time, space, and succession.” I 
reply, Yes, truly, it 1s so dependent, not, however, 
as intellect, but as your intellect: by accident, 
so to speak. Mr. Spencer must pardon me if 
I observe parenthetically that his ratiocination 


220 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


reminds me irresistibly of a certain cowherd, 
mentioned by Voltaire. The good peasant had 
never in his life seen any other beasts than those 
which he tended; and he confidently affirmed 
that if God chose to create any other they must 
have horns and ruminate. A similar answer may 
be given to what Mr. Spencer says of the will. 
It needs an end, I grant. But I maintain that 
the end may be in itself, or outside. So far as 
this argument is concerned, the universe may be 
either a necessary end of the divine activity— 
which I personally do not hold—or contingent. 
But that it should be an end, derogates nothing 
from the perfection of the Absolute. Mr. Spencer's 
logical puzzles are, I admit, fatal to idolatries. 
They leave Rational Theism absolutely untouched. 


And now having, I trust, sufficiently cleared 
away the objections to Theism, urged from the 
latest developments of physical science, and from 
the laws of consciousness, let us go on to my next 
point, and inquire what grounds for belief in God 
are afforded by reason freely exercised, according 
to the methods specially prized in these days. 
And here I must frankly admit that the strongest 
grounds for such belief are inexpressible, because 
they transcend the logical understanding. To 
those with whom the Divine Noumenon is no 


Ne | THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELATIVITY. 221 


tradition of the schools or of the nursery, no 
shibboleth of a sect, no war-cry of a party, but 
an object, and the Supreme Object, an experience, 
and the most intimate experience, the very 
source and fount of their whole moral life—to 
such, I say, it is always distasteful, and some- 
thing more, to engage in controversy concern- 
ing what is so personal and so sacred. If they 
do so, it is asa matter of duty, and not because 
it makes any difference to them how the argu- 
ment goes. But apart from this, they may 
surely claim to have done enough in satisfaction 
of the debt which they owe to all men, if 
they show that their faith, so far from being 
unreasonable, does, in fact, sum up the con- 
clusions to which reason points; that the language 
wherein they clothe it, although infinitely inade- 
quate, is the nearest approximation to the truth 
which is possible to us. Let us start, then, from 
the way of thinking just now so much in credit. 
The popular philosophy of the day is a philosophy 
of relativity, employing as its most valued instru- 
ment comparative analysis. I am not going to 
say one word against this philosophy considered 
in itself. I know well how many provinces of 
intellectual activity are full of its labour, and how 
fruitful that labour has been. I admit that to 
reduce the complex to the simple, the phenomenon 
to the law, the special law to the general law, 1s, 
so far as it goes, an explanation. Ido not deny 


222 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


that if universal being were merely monotonous 
and inflexible mechanism, such would be the whole 
explanation. But universal being is not merely 
that. It is also organic. It seems to me self- 
evident that the tendency of lower forms to pass 
into higher, imphes something else than mechan- 
ism, that a system of definite directions is merely 
a synonym for finality. To say that ‘all things 
are essentially coustituted by the sum of their 
relations’? is surely a contradiction in terms. 
I cannot understand how any one with the slightest 
tincture of philosophical discipline could have 
committed himself to so surprising a proposition. 
All things are related. True. But how can corre- 
lation be essence? It is like saying that the 
outside of a thing is its inside. I take leave to 
hold as absolutely clear and irrefragable truth that 
it is a logical impossibility for the Relative to 
exist alone. It pre-supposes the Absolute. To 
the Absolute the whole series of relative realities 
tends. J venture very confidently to affirm that, 
however hard we try, it is a psychological im- 
possibility for us to rid ourselves of the idea that 
finite phenomena, apprehensible by the senses, 
veil an Infinite Reality. To that Reality com- 
parison cannot apply; ‘‘ nec viget quidquam simile 
aut secundum.” Analysis cannot reach it, for to 
analyze the Infinite is a contradiction in terms. 
So far Mr. Spencer is with me, and it is always 
a pleasure to find myself in accord with that 


v. | THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE. 223 


patient and candid thinker. He regards ‘the 
consciousness of an Inscrutable Power, manifested 
to us through all phenomena,” ‘the Ultimate 
Cause of things,” ‘“‘the Absolute” as a certainty.* 
And here Mr. Spencer is but echoing, perhaps 
unwittingly, the words of Kant, although that 
philosopher, in his old-fashioned style, speaks not 
of ‘‘an Inscrutable Power,’’ but of God. It is 
God, as he judges, ‘‘ whose existence we are 
compelled to conceive as the idea of something 
upon which the supreme and necessary unity of all 
experience is based,”’ something, he adds, ‘‘ which 
we represent to ourselves as standing in a relation 
to the whole system of phenomena analogous to 
that in which phenomena stand to each other.’ I 
hold that there is something in the human mind— 
and no fork of Positivism will ever succeed in ex- 
pelling it—which compels us to take account, not 
only of the external universe, but of the mysterious | 
principle behind it, the last term upon which hang | 
all nature and all thought. Nay, more, I hold it 
the necessary conclusion of the human understand- 
ing that phenomena, apprehensible by the senses, 
must have a reason which is not a phenomenon, 
and which therefore is ‘‘ beyond the probe of 
’ chemic test.”’ And here I may be told, You have 
appealed to Kant: to Kant shall you go. Are 
you not doing precisely what that master has 

shown to be wholly inadmissible: venturing with 


* First Principles, § 31. 


224 RATIONAL THEISM. (cH. 


the speculative reason beyond the limits of 
sensible experience, forgetting that the principle 
of causality is of purely subjective value? Cer- 
tainly I should be the last person in the world to 
shut my eyes to the great philosophical revolution 
wrought by Kant. Unquestionably his system 
enshrines much eternal truth. But in philosophy 
it is well to risk, if so it must be, the reproach of 
eclecticism, and to call no man, Rabbi. Ade- 
quately to discuss the Kantian doctrine of 
causality would demand a volume. I must con- 
tent myself with here indicating, in the fewest 
words, how the argument seems to me to lhe. 
IT admit, then, that the subject imposes its own 
form on knowledge and makes it subjective. 
I deny that subjectivism necessarily follows from 
this. The phenomena of the external world are 
not merely abstract signs, like algebraic symbols. 
They are instinct with life: they obey law: they 
are disposed in a wonderful order. The life, the 
law, the order demand explanation. And for this 
explanation the principle of causality 1s necessary. 
It has been admirably pointed ‘out by Dr. Marti- 
neau that “we ourselves are the only cause of 
whose mode of action we have immediate know- 
ledge, through inner intuition,” and that fat 
is .. . by ana priori axiom of the understanding, 
that we apply the causal relation to the external 
world.” * The idea of cause is both subjective 


* A Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 200. 


v.| THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSALITY. 225 


and objective: subjective so far as this, that the 
intellect actually possesses the idea; objective in 
that the idea is founded upon something which is 
not our reason. Deny this objective foundation 
and you are necessarily landed in Nihilism. And 
will any one who takes Kant’s teaching as a whole 
affirm that such is its issue? I do not for one 
moment believe that Kant himself held the law of 
causation to be wholly subjective. We might, 
indeed, have been compelled so to think if he 
had given us only The Critique of Pure Reason. 
But it appears to me that, in the light of his 
other writings, this view of his doctrine is quite 
untenable. I will merely add the caution—which 
recent philosophical literature in this country 
shows to be not unnecessary—that to Kant 
transcendental means true, not false. Nor is 
there any way out of Nihilism for his disciples, 
save to take the Supreme Principle which 
is beyond sensible experience, and to build on 
that. 


Now what can we know about this Supreme 
Principle? this Ultimate Reality? As we saw in 
_ the last chapter, Mr. Spencer, the most eminent 
spokesman of Scientific Agnosticism, answers No- 
thing. ‘‘The Absolute cannot in any manner 
or degree be known, in the strict sense of 

Q 


226 RATIONAL THEISM. [cH 


knowing.’ * ‘The forms of our consciousness 
are such that the Absolute cannot in any manner 
or degree be brought within them.’+ Mr. 
Spencer’s argument from the laws of conscious~ 
ness I have already dealt with. Here I may 
remark that he is not quite consistent. But I 
will not make it matter of reproach to Mr. Spencer 
that, in the same breath, he declares our utter 
inability to know anything of the Ultimate Reality, 
and tells us several important particulars regarding 
it. Surely to know that anything exists, is to, 
know something considerable about it. And Mr. 
Spencer predicates of the Ultimate Reality not 
only being, but causal energy, eternity, omnipo- 
tence; more, he recognizes it as “ the basis of our 
intelligence.” { Of all this we have certitude, 
Mr. Spencer thinks. I quite agree. I equally 
agree when he lays it down that the ‘Ca taneie 
of this Power “ transcends intuition and is beyond 
imagination,’ § and that it may be called, nay, 
must be called, so far as its essence is concerned, 
‘unknown and unknowable.” Indeed, I would 
myself put it even more strongly, and would say 
with Pascal, “If there is a God, He must be 


infinitely incomprehensible.” || I go om to assent 
* First Principles, § 27. t Ibid. § 31. 
t Ibid. § 32. § Ibid. § 31. 


|| So St. Augustine : ‘De Deo loquimur : quid mirum si non 
comprehendis ? si enim comprehendis non est Deus.”—Serm. 
CXVil. 


v.| MENS AGITAT MOLEM. 227 


as unreservedly when Mr. Spencer tells us that 
this Power—Deus absconditus, as I hold it to be— 
is ‘‘manifested”’ ‘through phenomena” to our 
‘consciousness.’ I should lke here to point out 
the exception which ought to be taken to Mr. 
Spencer's employment of these words ‘“ phe- 
nomena’’ and ‘ consciousness,’ if the occasion 
permitted. But it does not; so I will follow his 
terminology, and will ask him to consider what the 
manifestations of the Ultimate Reality through 
phenomena to consciousness do, in fact, amount to. 

First consider the phenomena of the external 
universe. Every sensible outcome of intelligence, 
every work, for example, of plastic or constructive 
art, is in some sort a revelation of its cause.* It is 
not only a thing, but a thought. Now what does 
the external universe manifest to our conscious- 
ness of the Power which, as Mr. Spencer tells us, 
‘‘nersists unchanging under these sensible appear- 
ances,’’ and which he would not object, I think, 
to call “their great Original’? ? If we look around 
us and above us, we find everywhere what we 
term mind and matter: ‘‘mens agitat molem.” 
Shall we say then that the Ultimate Reality 1s 
both mind and matter? No. That would be to 
make it in our likeness, to fall into the anthropo- 
morphism from which Mr. Spencer so earnestly 
beseeches us to abstain. Surely, however, we may 
gay with Fénelon that the Ultimate Reality ‘‘is 


* "Evepyela On 6 zolyoas 75 epyov éortt arws.—Aris. Eth., 1. ix. c. 7. 


a> 


228 RATIONAL THEISM. [CH. 


neither mind nor matter, but is all that is essential 
in mind and matter.’”’ Now what is essential in 
mind is reason. And if there is any lesson taught 
more clearly than another by the recent researches 
of physicists, it is the intelligibility of the universe. 
Reason everywhere, in the microcosm of the leaf 
as in the macrocosm of the fixed stars; in the 
lowest protozoa as in the highest mammals. Such 
is the lesson which we see writ large in Nature. 
Its laws, as Hegel has irrefutably shown, are 
identical with the laws of the human intellect. 
Reason is the constituent element of reality. Mr. 
Spencer happily speaks of ‘‘the veritable revela- 
tion of the external universe’’* made to us by 
physical science. The more fully that revelation 
discloses it to us, the more completely its grand 
title of Kosmos is seen to be justified. ‘‘ In con- 
templating the structure of the universe,” said 
Goethe, ‘“‘ we cannot resist the conclusion that the 
whole is founded upon a distinct idea.” I need 
not dwell upon what is so familiar. And does not 
this point to the Supreme Cause as Objective 
Reason? Does not the intelligibility of the world 
imply an intelligent Author of the world? We 
are often told that Nature is an infinite virtuality, 
potentially containing all: that the universe 1s 
self-caused, is at once cause and effect: that its 
activity is immanent and necessary, and also 
instinctive, until it attains consciousness in man: 


* First Principles, § 7. 


v.] NATURAL SELECTION. 229 


that intellect is not the starting-point but the 
goal: not a principle but a resultant. Now, what 
does all this mean but that from brute force you 
may get intelligence; from matter, mind; from 
mechanism, will? Surely that is an irrational 
doctrine. Surely it is against reason to believe 
that the unintelligible is the primary source of the 
intelligible. ‘‘He that formed the eye shall He 
not see?’ asked the Hebrew poet. But now we 
are told that the eye formed itself; that this 
most exquisite piece of mechanism has insensibly 
developed from a sensitive membrane. Natural 
selection, we are assured, has transformed a simple 
apparatus, formed of an optic nerve, clothed with 
pigment, and covered with a transparent tissue, to 
that admirable instrument of vision called the eye. 
Well, let us suppose that this is so, as I, for my 
part, have no difficulty in believing. And pray, 
how does it tell against the Divine induction ? 
May we not rather apply to it the words which 
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire used of the succession of 
species, and see in it ‘“‘one of the most glorious 
manifestations of creative power and a fresh motive 
for admiration and love’”’? Is not this a more 
reasonable hypothesis than that which explains 
so marvellous a development by chance or blind 
necessity ? 

Natural selection! Let me say another word 
upon that topic before I pass on. Who that has 
given attention to the great question of evolu- 


230 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


tion, so much discussed of late years, does not 
remember the unbounded confidence with which 
the mechanical theory of species was advanced by 
ultra-Darwinians? I mean the theory which 
explained the type as a sort of mosaic put together 
by the hazard of external circumstances, as a 
fortuitous aggregation of characteristics, produced 
in isolation, one after another, by selection or 
habit. But it was pointed out that the very facts 
—experience itself—force us to recognize the 
regular correlation of the characteristics apper- 
taining to the type of a species, and that this is 
absolutely fatal to the mechanical principle of 
explanation. Recognize—and you cannot help 
recognizing, unless you are theory-blind—recognize 
the law of correlation, and you must also recognize 
the fact that every individual modification of 
importance is directly hnked to a system of 
correlative modifications. And such recognition 
makes an end of that hypothesis of indeterminate 
variability, resting upon purely fortuitous in- 
fluences, which furnishes a basis for the merely 
mechanical concept of the two forms of selection. 
Is it reasonable to ask us to regard as fortuitous 
a totality of correlative modifications producing 
themselves in the most different parts of the 
organism and preserving among themselves the same 
relation? It is unreasonable. The only rational 
explanation is to be found in Objective Reason. 
Reason, then, the essence of mind, is what 


v. | THE LAWS OF NATURE. 231 


sensible phenomena disclose to us, ever more 
clearly. And what is essential in matter? Of 
matter in itself we of course know nothing; we 
know only its qualities, to some extent, through 
sensation. Make abstraction of its qualities, and 
what remains of it? It is given us, Kant has well 
observed, only as the union of two forces—the 
force of expansion and the force of attraction. It 
is the visibility of force. Shall we say, then, that 
the Ultimate Reality is force? As the Christian 
poet sang long centuries ago, ‘‘ Deus, rerum tenax 
vigor immotus in Te permanet.” But force is 
only a resultant; nor, as I have already had 
occasion to observe, if we go by experience, have 
we knowledge of any other primary cause of force 
than volition. It seems to me that the logical 
following of Mr. Spencer’s own method leads us 
to the conclusion that what we call the laws of 
nature are the unchanging visible expression of 
volition; that this is the only possible name under 
which we can gather up the mighty forces ever 
energizing throughout the boundless universe ; 
that matter, therefore, is merely a manifestation 
‘of Will. But what of space? it may be asked. 


Well, if space be wholly subjective, 1 is, as the 


French would say, a negligible quantity. If it 
have any objective reality, we may account of it, 
with Kant and Boscovitch, as a result of force. 
Abundant grounds, then, seem to exist in support 
of Hartmann’s dictum, ‘“‘ The whole world-process 


232 RATIONAL THEISM. [cH. 


is, in its content, only a logical process, but in 
its existence a continued act of will.’’ That is 
what physical law means. Reason and Will are 
inseparably united in the universe, as they are in 
idea. If we will anything, it is for some reason. 
Hence Aristotle’s definition of will, dpefis pera 
hoyov: appetitus rationalis, as the Schoolmen 
render it. Abstract intelligence from will, and 
pace Schopenhauer, it is will no longer. But this 
union of reason and will, this appetitus rationalis 
it is which constitutes what we call personality.* 
I shall have to touch upon that point again 
shortly. Here I observe that I think this is as 
far as external nature enables us to go. I do not 
_ understand how we can argue from a scheme of 
things, apparently so imperfect, to a perfect First 
Cause. I do not understand how it can be main- 
tained that Nature reveals to us the creative God | 
of theology or the perfect God of metaphysics. ul 
But the phenomena of the external world are 
not the only channels through which the Ultimate 
Existence is manifested to consciousness. We 
must also take into account the lessons of what 
the somewhat slipshod language of the day calls 
“mental phenomena.” ‘ Unde arripuisti mentem 
tuam?’’ asks Cicero. Mr. Spencer answers the 
question. He tells us that the Ultimate Existence 
is ‘‘the basis of our intelligence.” What then 


* The theological definition of personality is “nature 
rationalis individua substantia.” 


v.] “ THE BASIS OF OUR INTELLIGENCE.” 233 


does our intelligence tell us concerning its basis ? 
Let us go by experience, we are cautioned, on 
every hand. By all means. But let us take the 
totality of experience. Let us recognize internal 
as well as external facts. ‘‘ Nihil est in intellectu 
quod non prius fuerit in sensu,’’ Locke insisted. 
‘‘ Nisi ipse intellectus,’ added Leibnitz. The 
dictum, so completed, seems to me the only 
foundation of all philosophy worthy of the name. 
The sages of old explained ‘‘intellectus”’ as ‘ intus 
legens,’’ and the etymology, whatever we may 
think of it, expresses a great truth. It is intellect 
that interprets for us the phenomena of the ex- 
ternal world. It is intellect that provides for us 
the explanation of what Faust calls the deep 
mysterious miracles—-‘‘ geheime, tiefe Wunder ’’— 
in the depths of our own consciousness. Mr. 
Spencer in his Psychology has committed himself 
to the surprising proposition, ‘‘ To be conscious is 
to think: to think is to put together impressions 
and ideas.” But surely the first step in cognition 
is direct perception. And as surely reflection 1s 
the second. Aristotle has drawn this out with 
much clearness at the beginning of his Physves. 
We first view the thing as a whole, passively, 
involuntarily. We then proceed to consider it in 
parts: to divide it, to analyze it, to define it; in 
other words, to reason about it. And indeed Mr. 
Spencer himself elsewhere seems to recognize this. 
‘‘Disjunction,”’ he tells us, ‘is the primordial form 


234 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


29 


of all reasoning.’ What, then, is the primary 
fact which the intellect reveals to us, as soon as 
the act of thinking takes place in our own con- 
sciousness ? Unquestionably it is the distinction 
of self and non-self. And, as unquestionably, it 
is mere matter of fact, which not even the most 
strenuous professor of what is called ‘‘ autonomous 
morality’ will deny, that this distinction is 
accompanied—I beg the reader to note the word— 
by the idea of moral obligation. It is also matter 
of fact that the source of that obligation has ever 
been felt to le in a mysterious and hyperphysical 
Entity whereon man depends. Dr. Martineau does 
not express himself too strongly when he insists 
that ‘the constitution of our moral nature is un- 
intelligible except as living in response to an 
objective Perfection, pervading the universe with 
Holy Law.’’* ‘The one substance with many 
names,’’ sings Alschylus. Nay, and unnamed, as 
among the Buddhists, who in the moral order of 
the universe recognize the inexorable law of right- 
eousness, ruling in the three worlds: the one 
Power, supreme over gods and men and all things. 
This is the common factor of all creeds. They all 
proclaim, however rude or refined, grotesque or 
subime their symbolism, the absolute dominion 
of the moral law, as a perpetual obligation binding 
upon all possible intelligent beings, and therefore, 
as a Transcendental Reality, a manifestation of 


* A Study of Religion, vol. 11. p. 30. 


y.] OVERWEENING DOGMATISM. 235 


the Eternal under the condition of time. The 
word religion signifies as much. It imports, to 
use the words of Kant, “the recognition of all our 
duties as divine commands.” All religions, I say, 
witness to the concept of duty as a primary in- 
tellectual fact: a concept the essence of which, 
Mr. Darwin tells us, is ‘‘ appreciation of justice, 
independently of any pain or pleasure felt at the 
moment;” they point to the Ultimate Reality 
which is ‘‘the basis of our intelligence” as law 
moral. 

But Mr. Spencer will have it that the concept of 
duty is merely an altruistic tendency developed 
by the survival of the fittest; that the moral 
sense is only the past experience of countless 
generations commanding what is useful for the 
tribe; that conscience is nothing but the gradual 
transference of an external to an internal relation. 
It appears to me that this overweening dogmatism 
collapses at the touch of comparison or of analysis. 
Take first, comparison. I account it absolutely 
certain that we find among the animals called 
lower, not, indeed, an ethical sense, but what 
we may term the analogon of that sense; hay 
that we sometimes find it in a high state of de- 
velopment; while there exist vast multitudes of 
men in whom the fundamental ideas of right and 
wrong are most dim and inchoate. The South 
African Bushmen, whom the Rev. Mr. Richerer, 
a missionary, describes as ‘‘lower than the beasts 


oe 


236 RATIONAL THEISM. [ cH. 


around them in moral qualities,” are fair specimens 
of the most abject varieties of savage humanity. 
He is but one out of a great cloud of witnesses, 
for the evidence on this matter is overwhelming. 
But, indeed, we need not go so far afield as South 
Africa. Our great cities swarm with veritable 
Yahoos, who would seem almost— 


‘““Unfettered by the sense of crime; 
To whom a conscience never wakes.’’, 


On the other hand, no one who has lived much 
with dogs, and has candidly and closely studied 
them, can doubt their possessing a quasi-ethical 


_ standard, by which, as they know well, their 
_ actions should be governed : their thoughts accus- 


ing or else excusing one another, according as 
they fall short of it or conform to it. I quite 
grant that the canine analogon of conscience is 
really the dog’s sense of the obligation, under 
penalties, to bring his will into harmony with_ 
a higher will; which, indeed, is precisely the true 
account of the human conscience too. I quite 
deny that you can explain it as an ultimate 
tendency developed by the survival of the fittest 
dogs, or as the result of the past experience of 
countless generations of dogs, commanding what 
is useful to the tribe; or as the transference of 
an external to an internal relation of doghood. 
Comparison is fatal to Mr. Spencer’s view. So is 
analysis. ‘Take conscience as we find it in its 


¥. | THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 237 


fullest development—the conscience of a virtuous 
man or woman—and analyze it as you would 
analyze any other human instinct, and you will 
find that it includes a sense of right and wrong 
in motives, an absolute obligation to follow the 
right, and a sanction in the shame and remorse 
and fear which attend upon a violation of this 
obligation. These are its essential elements, and 
you will in no way get them out of the tribal 
utilitarian feeling by evolution, unless you put 
them into it, previously, by hypothesis. JI am 
far from denying that the course of the evolution 
of the moral sense may have been pretty much 
what Mr. Darwin supposes. But I repeat that 
evolution is a modal and not a causal theory. 
We do not really explain a thing by tracing it 
back to rudimentary forms and by exhibiting its 
growth. 


It appears to me, then, that as external phe- 
nomena manifest to our consciousness the Ultimate 
Reality as Law, which is another name for the 
union of Reason and Will, wherein consists Per- 
sonality, so do ‘‘ mental phenomena” also, adding 
this further revelation first of all, that the Law 
ig just, the Reason right, the Will ethical, the 
Person holy. I should like to go on, were it not 
for the inexorable limits of space, to show, after 


238 RATIONAL THEISM. [ cH. 


the manner of Plato, how the intellect testifies 
that the ideas of Truth, Goodness, Beauty, as of 
Justice, dimly reflected in itself, belong to an 
order of absolute principles anterior and superior 
to man; how by an architectonic law of its being 
it is compelled to refer the complete realization 
of these ideas to the Ultimate Reality, which it 
therefore contemplates as 70 "Epoépevor, the Object 
of all desire. I should especially like to dwell 
upon the manifestation of that Ultimate Reality 
made to our consciousness by necessary truths, 
such as the axioms of ethics; truths self-evident, 
universal, unchangeable. Are we told that these 
are so many generalizations of the experience of 
the race? ‘The answer has been given by the late 
Professor Green with great plainness of speech: 
‘* People who think that the development of habits, 
through hereditary transmission, will account for 
the necessity of necessary truths, show that they 
do not know what is meant by such necessity.” 
These verities are those of which the noblest 
heroine of Hellenic tragedy spoke: ‘‘ Not of to-day 
nor of yesterday, but timeless.’ They are reve- 
lations of the noumenal, gleams of the Eternal 
Truth which is their source, for there is only one 
Hternal: péyas €v tovrous Beds ovd€ ynpdocKke. But 
I hasten on to the point especially necessary for 
the elucidation of my argument. I have said, and 
I suppose no one will deny, that the primary fact 
revealed to us by reason, as soon as the act of 


v.| THE UNITY OF THE EGO. 239 


thinking takes place in our consciousness, is the 
distinction of self and non-self. Intellect, then, 
manifests to me myself. The perception of self- 
hood is the very fundamental interior fact of 
which I am conscious. If any one can really 
believe that this self is merely a succession of 
states of consciousness, of thoughts, volitions, 
hopes, fears, without any underlying unity—vwell, 
I suppose he must. It is an old saw, and a wise 
one, ‘‘ No absurdity is so great that it does not 
find favour with some philosophers.”’ The credo 
quia incredibile appears to have passed from theo- 
logians to physicists. The whole matter has been 
summed up by Lotze in a well-known chapter of 
his Microcosmos with a terseness and cogency too 
rare in his writings. ‘‘ Our belief in the unity of 
the ego rests not upon our appearing to ourselves 
such a unity, but upon our being able to appear 
to ourselves at all. What a being appears to 
itself is not the important point. If, anyhow, it 
can appear to itself, or other things to it, capable 
must it be of unifying manifold phenomena in the 
absolute indivisibility of its own nature.” Until 
Mr. Spencer sees his way to answering this argu- 
ment, I shall take leave to hold as a self-evident 
truth that I am not a mere succession of states of 
consciousness; that the ego, upon its own self- 
testimony, is a something which is one, identical, 
permanent, rational, volitional, and free—not, of | 
course, absolutely, but relatively free—a something | 


240 RATIONAL THEISM. [ cH. 


which is the principle and the cause of our acts.* 
All this, as it appears to me, we must admit, if 
we will not shut our eyes to self-evident facts of 
our intellect, known by us more certainly than 
any other facts.; But these facts are ‘‘ manifesta- 


* Mr. Spencer insists—and it is a fair specimen of what I 
have called his logical puzzles:—‘‘It may readily be shown 
that a cognition of self, properly so called, is absolutely 
negatived by the laws of thought. The fundamental condition 
to all consciousness is the antithesis of subject and object... . 
What is the corollary from this doctrine as bearing on the con- 
sciousness of self? The mental act, in which self is known, 
implies, like every other mental act, a perceiving subject and 
a perceived object. If, then, the object perceived is self, what 
is the subject that perceives it? or, if it is the true self which 
thinks, what other self can it be that is thought of P_ Clearly, 
a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing 
and the known are one—in which subject and object are identi- 
fied: and this, Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation 
of both” (First Principles, p. 65).: The simple answer to this 
argument is that all being, by virtue of being, is in itself 
knowable, though not necessarily to this or that grade of in- 
tellect. Being—Hns—has certain so-called transcendental 
notes (transcendental in the genuine school-sense, because they 
transcend, or are not peculiar to any one category of experi- 
ence). These are unum, verum, bonum. Verwm means know- 
able. Being, which is not knowable, is not—being. Nor does 
the act of knowledge abolish the distinction between subject 
and object either in ordine essendi, or wm ordine cognoscendt. 
The truth is, that, as I have already pointed out at p. 218, Mr. 
Spencer does not understand the meaning of the word abstrac- 
tion. He appears to have entered upon the vast task to which 
he has so patiently devoted his great powers, without even an 
elementary knowledge of metaphysics. 

+ Dr. Martineau has well observed, ‘Till we accept the 
‘faiths’ which our faculties postulate, we can never know even 
the sensible world : and when we accept them, we shall know 
much more.”—Contemporary Review, March, 1876, p. 547. 


v.] PERSONALITY. 241 


tions” to our “consciousness”’ of the Ultimate 
Reality, which is “ the basis of our intelligence.” 
And they manifest that Reality as possessing—I 
quite grant, or rather insist, in some transcendent 
and incomprehensible way—those qualities which 
are the self-affirmations of the intellect:* Sub- 
stance, Causality, Being, and all else included in 
the metaphysical conception of Personality. Are 
we here met with the objection which Mr. Spencer 
adopts from Dean Mansel that “there is a con- 
tradiction in conceiving the Absolute as Per- 
sonal,’ or, as Hegel puts it, that “it is absurd to 
predicate personality, selfhood of the Infinite, 
which, by its very nature is the negation of per- 
sonality, of selfhood, the Infinite being that which 
combines and contains all, and which therefore 
excludes nothing”? Utterly inconsistent with 
the idea of the Absolute, would Personality, of 
course, be, if it were a limitation. But it is not. 
In the proper sense of the word, Personality—Fiir- 
sich-sein—can be predicated only of the Infinite. 
‘“Tpse suum esse est.’ Perfect selfhood means 
immediate self-existence. What we call per- 
sonality, selfhood, in man, is but the dimmest 


* Spinoza says that there is no more in common between the 
Divine intelligence and the human, than there is between the 
puppy lying on the hearthrug and the constellation which we 
call the Dog. Surely this view is no longer tenable. All 
analogy points to the conclusion that mind, like matter, is ob- 
jectively similar throughout the universe; that it extends in 
an unbroken line from the lowest monad to the Infinite and 
Eternal. 


242 RATIONAL THEISM. | CH. 


shadow, the faintest effluence from the source and 
fount of Being, in whom alone is perfect Reason, 
perfect Will. ‘‘Signatum est super nos lumen 
vultus tui Domine.” The Ultimate Reality con- 
tains within itself the conditions of its existence. 
Man does not; for he needs the stimulus of non- 
self to be conscious of his selfhood. He does not 
need that stimulus to become a person, for the 
non-self does not create consciousness ; it merely 
manifests it; it is an occasion, not a cause. ‘The 
idea of Personality, like all ideas, is realized only 
in that Self-Existent—the original of all existence 
—which transcends those ideas, indeed, but in 
transcending, includes them. ‘There is a true 
sense in the fine saying of Schelling, ‘‘That in 
God alone is being, and that therefore all being 
is only the Being of God—-this thought neither 
reason nor feeling can take away; it is the 
supreme thought, in unison with which all hearts 
vibrate.’ This is the incommunicable attribute 
of the Ultimate Reality which we name God— 
self-existence. He alone, in the highest sense, is. 
But, as Leibnitz has conclusively shown, the 
concept of being, when analyzed, implies the 
concept of cause, and finds in that concept its 
explanation. 

So much, as it seems to me, we know concerning 
the Ultimate Reality. And surely it is enough to 
warrant us, after the manner of our fathers, in 
calling that Reality God. I say that Reality is 


v.] “THE PERSON.” 243 


manifested to our consciousness as the Original of 
the law physical, which rules in the phenomenal 
world, and of the law moral written on the fleshly 
tables of the heart; as the Supreme Good, in whom 
all ideas are realised; as the First Cause and Final 
End of the universe, where all is causation and 
finality ; as the Self-Existent, and therefore a 
Person, or rather let us say, with the Mundaka- 
Upanishad, ‘‘ The Person,” from whom all person- 
ality is an effluence; as the “basis of our intelli- 
gence,” of all intelligence ; for ‘‘as the spokes in 
the nave of a wheel, so all worlds and souls 
are fastened;in the One Soul.’’* Such are the 
conclusions which we must accept upon the testi- 
mony of intellect. The only logical alternative is 
to deny the validity of intellect altogether. And 
that, I take leave to say, is what is done by the 
school of which Mr. Spencer is so accomplished 
a representative. His philosophy is nothing but 
a gigantic attempt to explain the real, the living, 
by mechanism.t And it fails for the reason 
which I have indicated in a previous portion of 
this chapter: mechanics being nothing but an 
abstract science, and its properties mere abstrac- 
tions. If the intellect is valid, the true conclu- 
sion can never be Atheism or Agnosticism, but 


* Prasna-Upanishad, ii. 6. 

+ It is hardly too much to say that Mr. Spencer makes of 
consciousness nothing more than a simple accompaniment of 
merely nervous functions. 


244 RATIONAL THEISM. [on 


must be either Theism or some higher form of 
Pantheism, which is really, in good logic, a kind 
of Theism. 

But, it may be said, the conception of God in- 
volves us in invincible antinomies. I am far from 
denying it. Whenever we approach too near to 
ultimate questions, there are those dread forms to 
drive us back with that flaming sword which turns 
every way to keep the way of the tree of life. We 
should remember, however, that while in the finite, 
contradictories are in opposition, in the Absolute 
they find their union. Still antinomies, like 
miracles, are not to be needlessly multiplied. 
They are needlessly multiplied by many writers 10 
great credit at the present day; by those, to give 
one example, who tell us that a cause cannot be 
absolute because it exists in relation to its effects. 
It is a mere verbal puzzle. The idea of the Abso- 
lute is not incompatible with the idea of relation, 
although with the idea of necessary relation to the 
finite it is incompatible. This, by the way. I 
should here enter a caveat, which current literature 
shows to be abundantly necessary. Let me not, 
for a moment, be supposed to hold that our human 
and relative notions are the measure of the Absolute 
and Divine. The Infinite and Eternal is not “‘a 
magnified, non-natural man ;°’ nor can our speech 
do more than most dimly adumbrate Him. ‘ Pour 
dire ce quil est, il faut etre Lui-méme.” How 
predicate ratiocination of Him to whom all things 


Vv] “ SENSELESS BABBLE.” 245 


are manifest, or free action of Him who cannot 
swerve from the law of righteousness which Him- 
selfis? Reason and liberty are indeed in Him, in 
essence and in truth, but under a form quite 
unknown to us, inconceivable by us, ‘‘ beyond the 
reaches of our souls.’’ All our words, essentially 
phenomenal and relative, are but sensuous symbols 
of the great Noumenal Fact, concealing while they 
express; ‘broken lights,” distorting while they 
reveal. ‘The best in this kind are but shadows.” 
Professor Huxley, in one of his most interesting 
essays, denounces as ‘senseless babble” “‘ the 
demonstrations of those philosophers who under- 
take to tell us all about the nature of God.’ * If 
such philosophers there be—I confess I have not 
met with them in the course of my own reading {— 
I cheerfully say Amen to this anathema. But 
surely there is some mean between knowing all 
about a thing and knowing nothing about it. 
Surely there is a dogged dogmatism of negation as 
irrational as the most daring dogmatism of asser- 
tion. I feel sure Professor Huxley would assent 

* On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, published 
originally in the Fortnightly Review, November, 1874. The 
italics are mine. To the like effect Professor Tyndall somewhere 
writes: ‘We have as little fellowship with the Atheist who 
says that there is no God as we have with those Theists who 
profess to know what is in the mind of God,” 

+ Spinoza, at the end of the first book of his Hthics, does, 
indeed, write, “I have now explained the nature of God and its 


properties.” But it is not, probably, Spinoza whom Professor 
Huxley had in view—if, indeed, he had any one 1m view. 


246 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


to this. Nor can I refrain from cherishing the 
charitable hope that when he and many other 
eminent men make profession of Agnosticism, they 
really mean to deny, not what I have called 
Rational Theism, but what Mr. Tyndall has 
termed “the more grotesque forms of the theo-— 
logical.” * I am surprised that they should think 
this worth their while. The popular god, in all 
religions, is a thing of shreds and patches, a vice 
of gods, and cannot possibly be other. Comte has 
well spoken of that primary tendency in man to 
import the sense of his own nature in the radical 
explanation of all phenomena whatever. Nor 1s 
this tendency peculiar to man. We find it in 
other animals, very clearly marked. Deep down 
in the most secret recesses of sentient existence 
are the roots of the religious consciousness. 

We may safely admit, then, that anthropo- 
morphic conception based upon analogy is the 
simplest element in religion. And how little 
beyond that simplest element can the great mass 
of men soar? They are, in Swift’s trenchant 
phrase, as incapable of thinking as they are of 
flying. While the sage is on the mount, in rapt 


* Professor Huxley is himself my warrant for this hope. 
In replying to an article of mine, he cites the well-known words 
of Spinoza: “Per Deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc 
est substantiam constantem infinitis attributis,” and pronounces 
“The God so conceived is one that only a very great fool would 
deny, even in his heart.”—Fortnightly Review, December, 1886, 
p. 799. 


v. | POPULAR SUPERSTITION. 247 


communion with the Highest, they demand a 
golden calf as a present deity. And if Aaron 
consents, if is not only, nor chiefly, for the 
personal reason ‘‘il faut vivre’’—although here, 
too, I suppose the law of supply and demand 
prevails—but out of good nature; nay, out of 
piety, lest the people be godless altogether. Surely 
to such as, rightly or wrongly, account themselves 
to have attained ‘‘ a purer air,” the proper attitude 
to what they deem popular superstition is that of 
indulgent toleration, whereof Plato has left us so 
conspicuous an example. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
well writes, ‘‘ Through the gross body of dogmas, 
traditions and rites, a soul of truth is always 
visible—dimly or clearly, as the case may be... . 
Though from higher perceptions they hide the 
abstract verity within them; yet to lower percep- 
tions they render this verity more appreciable than 
it would otherwise be. They serve to make real 
and influential over men that which would other- 
wise be unreal and uninfluential. Or we may call 
them the protective envelopes, without which the 
contained truth would die; . . . modes of mani- 
festation of The Unknowable; and as having this 
for their warrant.” * Zeal against superstition ! 
Good, if usually a trifle ridiculous. But super- 
stition is not the worst of errors. Take care that 
while you root up the tares, you do not root up 
the wheat also; that in trying to purify the 


* First Principles, § 33. 


248 RATIONAL THEISM. [cH. 


popular belief you do not destroy it. There is in 
the Mesnevi Sherif of Jelalu-d’-Din, the illustrious 
Saint and Doctor of Islam, a striking and pathetic 
story in which this great lesson, so little appre- 
hended by the sectaries, whether of Puritanism or 
of physics, is powerfully inculcated. ‘‘ Moses,” we 
read, ‘‘in his wanderings in the wilderness, came 
upon a shepherd, who was praying to God in the 
fervour of his soul, and saying, ‘Oh, my Master, 
my Lord, would that I knew where I might find 
Thee, and become Thy servant. Would that I 
might tie Thy shoelatchet, and comb Thy hair, and 
wash Thy robes, and kiss Thy beautiful feet, and 
sweep T'hy chamber, and serve the milk of my 
goats to Thee, for whom my heart crieth out.’ 
And the anger of Moses was kindled, and he said 
to the shepherd, ‘'Thou blasphemest. The Most 
High has no body, and no need of clothing, nor of 
nourishment, nor of a chamber, nor of a domestic ; 
thou art an infidel.’ And the heart of the shepherd 
was darkened, for he could make to himself no 
image of one without bodily form and corporal 
wants; and he gave himself up to despair and 
ceased to serve God. And God spake unto Moses 
and said, ‘ Why hast thou driven my servant away 
from me? EHvery man has received from me his 
mode of being, his way of speech. What is evil 
in thee is good in another. What is poison to 
thee is honey to him. Words are nothing to me. 
I regard the heart. The compass serves only to 


v.] “ MOSTLY FOOLS.” 249 


direct the prayers of those who are without the 
Kébeh. Within, no one knows the use of it.’”’ 
Such is the apologue of the great Sdfi, and surely 
it is well worth pondering. We are too apt to 
undervalue that exceeding great multitude of 
people who are simply good and religious-minded, 
wholly undisturbed by the anxious questionings 
which shake the world. They are not intellectually 
considerable; mostly fools, perhaps. Yes. But 
diviner lips than Carlyle’s have said, ‘‘Take heed 
that ye despise not one of these little ones.” 
‘‘ Babes and sucklings.”’ I grantit. But to them 
are ofttimes revealed things hidden from the 
wise and prudent. The difficulties, the doubts 
which, like evil spirits that no exorcism can banish, 
haunt our philosophic and scientific schools, trouble 
them not— 
“Tn den heitern Regionen 
Wo die reinen Formen wohnen.” 

Unconsciously, passively, they, it may well be, 
have attained the higher synthesis withheld from 
us: and the problems which darken our horizon 
have melted into floating clouds for them, in 
the ampler «ther, the diviner air, of a nearer 
heaven. 


Unquestionably, of all those problems the most 
terrible is the existence, not of the Absolute, but 


259 RATIONAL THEISM. [cH. 


of the Perfect Being. Hard is it to conceive how 
the Supreme Self, in whose unmoved and immove- 
able calm all ideals are realized, could have become 
an active cause. It is infinitely harder to conciliate 
the existence of a Perfect Creator or First Cause 
with the existence of such a world as this. No 
doubt those Pessimist philosophers who pronounce 
it the worst of possible worlds, carry their sad 
doctrine to an unwarrantable length: we do not 
know what is possible. But certainly it must, if 
viewed by itself, appear to any one who has not 
closed the eyes of his understanding, to be at the 
best the work of a very narrowly restricted or 
of a very imperfect goodness. ‘That was the 
door to which I found no key.” Resignation is 
the last word of philosophy as of religion; of 
Goethe as of St. Augustine. Conscience: alone 
helps us by its testimony, ‘“‘ God is a righteous 
Judge.” ‘There is a powerful passage in Schopen- 
hauer, where he formulates the stern doctrine that 
the condition of ‘‘the purblind race of miserable 
men’’ cannot be other than it is, because justice 
reigns in the universe. ‘‘ Do we desire,” asks that 
profound and bitter thinker, ‘‘to know what men, 
morally considered, are worth as a whole and in 
general? We have only to consider their fate as 
a whole and in general. That is want, wretched- 
ness, affliction, misery, and death. Eternal justice 
reigns. If men were not, as a whole, worthless, 
their fate would not be so sad. In this sense we 


v. | AN UNFATHOMABLE ABYSS. 251 


may say the world itself is the judgment of the 
world. If we could lay all the misery of the world 
in one balance, and all the guilt of the world in 
another, the needle would certainly point to the 
centre.”’ What an overwhelming, what a piercing 
thought is this! And yet, if we consider the rest 
of sentient existence, groaning and travailing in 
pain together with us, it is but as a flash of 
lightning illuminating an unfathomable abyss. 
‘Behold the spectacle of brute nature; of im- 
pulses, feelings, propensities, passions, which in 
us are ruled, or repressed, by a superintending 
reason, but from which, when ungovernable, we 
shrink, as fearful and hateful. ... Millions of 
irrational creatures surround us, and it would seem 
as if the Creator had left part of His work in its 
original chaos, so monstrous are these beings, 
which move, and feel, and act without reflection 
and without principle... . [They] pass to and 
fro, in their wildness and isolation, no yoke on 
their neck, or ‘bit in their lips,’ the enemies of 
all they meet, yet without the capacity of self-love. 
They live on one another’s flesh by an original 
necessity of their being; their eyes, their teeth, 
their claws, their muscles, their voice, their walk, 
their structure within, all speak of violence and 
blood. They seem made to inflict pain ; they 
rush on their prey with fierceness, and devour it 
with greediness. There is scarcely a passion or 
a feeling which is sin in man, but is found brute 


252 RATIONAL THEISM. [ CH. 


and irresponsible in them.’ * Well might Dr. 
Arnold say, ‘“‘The whole subject of the brute 
creation is one of such painful mystery that I dare 
not approach it.” The curse which justly lies on 


* Cardinal Newman’s Discourses to Mixed Oongregations, 
p. 273. It is worth while to compare the following. striking 
passage of Schopenhauer: “In this respect the condition of 
the animal world, left to itself, in uninhabited countries, is 
“ especially instructive. A fine picture of it and of the sufferings 
which, without the co-operation of man, nature herself prepares, 
is given by Humboldt in his Ansichten der Natwr, nor does he 
omit to cast a glance at the analogous suffering of the human 
race, always and everywhere at variance with itself. However, 
in the simple, easily viewed life of the beasts the nothingness 
and vanity of the striving of the whole phenomenon becomes 
more clearly apprehensible. The multiplicity of the organiza- 
tion, the artistic skill of the means whereby each is fitted to its 
element and its prey, here clearly contrasts with the want of 
any one permanent final end: instead of it is exhibited only 
momentary pleasure, fleeting enjoyment conditioned by want, 
much and long suffering, constant war—bellum omnium—each 
in turn hunter and hunted, oppressions, want, need, and anguish, 
crying and howling; and so it goes on in secula seculorum until 
the crust of the planet breaks again. Junghuhn relates that in 
Java he saw a vast area entirely covered with skeletons, and 
took it for a battle-field. They were, however, merely skeletons 
of great turtles, five feet long, three feet broad, and of the same 
height, which, in order to lay their eggs, came this way from 
the sea, and then were set upon by wild dogs (canis rutilans), 
who, with their united strength, lay them on their backs, tear 
open the lower armour, that is the little shells of the belly, and 
so devour them alive. But it often happens that a tiger falls 
on the dogs when so engaged. All this suffering repeats itself 
thousands of times, year after year. For what were these turtles 
born? For what crime must they endure this torment? For 
what end this horrible scene ? ”—Die Welt als Wille, etc., Ergan- 
zungen zum zweiten Buch Kap. 28. 


v. | THE ONE ANCHOR OF THE SOUL. 253 


us, extends to them guiltless. Such is ‘“‘the burden 
and the mystery of all this unintelligible world.”’ 
Nor is there any alleviation of it save in the 
testimony of the inner oracle: ‘“‘ Thou hast made 
us: Thou art just.’’ This is the one anchor of 
the soul, sure and steadfast; the primary, the 
deepest of our certitudes—that justice rules the 
world, and that in loving justice and hating 
iniquity we are fellow-workers with the Highest. 
I wrote just now that resignation is the last word. 
And yet, not quite the last; happily for us. There 
is that other word of the indestructibility of our 
doing, common to all the great religions of the 
world, and so strangely and vividly pronounced by 
the one of them which has been embraced by the 
largest number of our race, I mean the Buddhist: 
that our personality is impressed upon our acts, 
and raises them from the phenomenal order, and 
seals them for eternity. Mere dreams of shadows 
as we are, we can follow the law within, we can 
do good. That is certain. And in that certitude 
the wisest and best of mankind have ever found 
‘‘amid the encircling gloom,” ‘‘a light unto their 
feet,” guiding them from the phenomenal to the 
noumenal world. ‘‘Hxortum est in tenebris lumen 
rectis.’ We will speak of this in the next 
chapter. 


CHAPTER VI. 
THE INNER LIGHT. 


‘‘ Lur us consider what happens in conversation, 
in reveries, In remorse, in times of passion, in 
surprises, in the instruction of dreams wherein 
often we see ourselves in masquerade—the droll 
disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real 
element, and forcing 1t on our distinct notice—we 
shall catch many hints that will broaden and 
lighten into knowledge of the Secret of Nature. 
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an 
organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; 
is not a function like the power of memory, of 
calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands 
and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the 
intellect or will, but the master of the intellect 
and the will; is the background of the being in 
which they lie, an immensity not possessed, and 
that cannot be possessed. . . . Of this pure nature 
every man is, at some time, sensible. Language 
cannot paint it with his colours. It is too sub- 
tile. It is indefinable, immeasurable, but we know 
that it pervades and contains us. . .. The 


CH. VI. | THE BASIS OF MYSTICISM. 255 


sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is 
made known by its independency of those limita- 
tions which circumscribe us on every hand... . 
Before the revelations of the soul, Time, Space, 
and Nature shrink away. . . . With each divine 
impulse the mind reads the thin rinds of the 
visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and 
inspires and expires its air. . . . By the necessity 
of our constitution, a certain enthusiasm attends 
the individual’s consciousness of that divine pre- 
sence. The character and duration of this influ- 
ence vary with the state of the individual from 
an ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspiration— 
which is its rare appearance—to the faintest glow 
of virtuous emotion in which it warms, like our 
household fires, all the families and associations 
of men, and make society possible.”’* So Hmer- 
son, in one of the most striking and suggestive of 
his Hissays. Does the reader exclaim, ‘‘ But this is 
mysticism!’’? Certainly itis. And mysticism is 
the proper complement of that Rational Theism 
which we considered in the last chapter ; its office 
to point from the phenomenal to the noumenal, 
from that which seems to that which is. It 1s 
based upon what I take leave to call the indubi- 
table fact, that the spirit of man comes in contact 
with a Higher Spirit whose manifestations carry 
with them their own proof, and are moral in their 
nature, are out of time and place, are enlightening, 


* Pages 221-231, Macmillan’s edition. 


256 THE INNER LIGHT. [ cH. 


purifying, and are therefore, in a true sense, ascetic. 
Here is that core of nature—‘‘der Kern der 
Nature ’’—which, as Goethe says, must be looked 
for in men’s hearts. The mystic is one who knows 
divine things otherwise than by hearsay, who sees 
them by an inner light; one to whom the Infinite 
and Eternal is no mere article of belief, but an 
experience. ‘The mystical doctrine, in its essence, 
is that the highest in man can hold immediate 
intercourse with the Highest in the universe, that 
the human soul can enjoy direct communion with 
the Supreme Object, to which neither the senses 
nor the logical understanding can attain. I shall 
proceed briefly to survey the chief systems in 
which that doctrine has been clothed. And I 
shall then consider the especial significance of 
the expression which it has found in modern 
philosophy. 


First, then, let us go back three or four thousand 
years in the history of our race and look at the 
primitive wisdom stored up for us in the Upanr- 
shads, and particularly in the Katha Upanishad, 
the most perfect specimen of mystic Hindu philo- 
sophy. The Brahmin Végasravasa, desirous of 
heavenly rewards, surrendered at a sacrifice all 
that he possessed. Faith entered into the heart 
of his son Nakiketas and he said, ‘‘ Dear father, 


VI. | THE SUPREME SECRET. 257 


to whom wilt thou give me?’ He said it a 
second and a third time. The father angrily 
replied, ‘“‘I shall give thee unto death.” The 
rash promise had to be kept, like Jephthah’s. 
Nakiketas goes to the abode of Yama, the Regent 
of the Dead, and finds there none to receive him. 
After three days Yama returns, and by way of re- 
paration for his want of hospitality to ‘“‘ a venerable 
guest, a Brahmin,’ promises to grant him three 
boons, whatever he may choose. The third boon 
which Nakiketas demands is ‘‘ a knowledge of what 
there is in the great Hereafter.’’ Yama begs him 
to ask for something else. ‘‘ On this point even 
the Gods have formerly doubted. It is not easy 
to understand. The subject is subtle. Choose 
sons and grandsons who shall live a hundred 
years; choose the wide abode of earth, abundant 
harvests, fair maidens with their chariots and 
musical instruments.’ ‘‘ No,” says Nakiketas, 
“these things last but till to-morrow, for they 
wear out the vigour of the senses. Keep thou 
thy horses: keep dance and song for thyself. No 
man can be made happy by wealth. Shall we 
possess wealth when we see thee? What mortal, 
slowly decaying here below, would delight in long 
life after he has duly weighed the pleasures which 
arise from beauty and love?” So he presses for 
his boon. And at last Yama unfolds in mystic 
language the supreme secret. ‘‘ The good is one 


thing: the pleasant is another. The wise preter 
S 


258 THE INNER LIGHT. [cu 


the good to the pleasant. The fool chooses the 
pleasant through greed and avarice. This is the 
world, he thinks; there is no other. Thus he 
falls again and again under my sway.”*. And 
then Yama expounds the doctrine of the Self— 
4iman—infinite, invisible, divine, life of the world 
and life of our life; of whom many are not able 
to hear, whom many, even when they hear of Him, 
do not comprehend. ‘This Self is not born, it 
dies not; it sprang from nothing, nothing sprang 
from it. It is not killed though the body is killed. 
Tf the slayer thinks that he slays, if the slain thinks 
that he is slain, they do not understand: for this 
does not slay, neither is that slain. Lesser than 
the least and greater than the greatest, this Self 
is seated in the breast of every living thing. This 
the passionless sage beholds and his sorrows are 
left behind. The sage that finds in his heart 
the infinite all-pervading Self no longer sorrows. 
There is, then, as the great teacher, Death, unfolds 
the mystery, one Reality and only one; and the 
highest wisdom is for a man to see that he is one 
with this one Reality, this characterless thought, 
which like the ether is everywhere, in a con- 
tinuous plenitude of being. It is Maya, the selt- 
feigning world fiction, which has feigned itself 
from everlasting, that presents the variety of ex- 
perience, the duality of subject and object, and 


* He is subject to perpetual rebirth and death. 


VI. | THE DOCTRINE OF THE SELF. 259 


these melt away into unity in the light of the 
ecstatic vision. 

But how may a man thus put aside the veil of 
Maya, transcend the illusion of phenomena, and 
attain to this intuition of the Self? ‘Not by the 
Veda,” Yama teaches, “‘ nor by understanding, nor 
by much learning; neither he that has not ceased 
from evil, nor he that is not concentrated, nor he 
whose mind is not quiescent, can reach this Self by 
spiritual insight.”’ 

I have dwelt thus much upon this Upanishad 
because here we have the substance of Aryan 
mysticism in its most ancient expression: the 
dominant idea, however variously developed, of all 
the schools of Hindu theosophy, including the 
Buddhist. And if from India we turn to Greece, 
we find the same thought gradually unfolded. 
Pythagoras is little more to us than a name. 
Certain, however, it is that he lived chiefly in the 
memory of his countrymen as the founder of a 
mystical system, derived probably from the Hast, 
of which ‘“‘ Know thyself”? was the cardinal pre- 
cept. And what shall we say of Socrates, ‘ the 
religious missionary doing the work of a_philo- 
sopher,” to use Mr. Grote’s happy phrase? ‘That, 
Daimon, or Deity,* of his, an internal guide, not 


*T am following Kiihner. See his In Xenophontis Commen- 
tarios Prologomena, § 5, “De Socratis Demonio,”’ the best 
account of the matter with which I am acquainted, and one of 
the briefest. 


260 THE INNER LIGHT. [cH. 


peculiar to him, but, as he taught, apprehensible by 
alt men who piously and holily worship the Gods 
and preserve their bodies pure and chaste, what 1s 
it but the light spoken of in the Brihadaranyaka 
Upanishad ; the light within the heart, which when 
the sun has sunk, and the moon has set, and all 
sounds are hushed, still illumines man, the light of 
the Self, which is other than the body and the 
senses? This was the kernel of the teaching for 
which he witnessed a good confession. It was his 
ereat achievement to recall philosophy from the 
beggarly elements of the physical world to the 
study of human nature: to maintain, in opposition 
to the sophists, that the true point of departure is 
to be sought not in the senses, but in thought, in 
the mind. And this is the keynote of the whole 
doctrine of Plato, who, in the striking words of Mr. 
Maurice, enfranchised men from systems, and sent 
them to seek for wisdom in the quiet of their own 
hearts. There can be no question at all that in 
the Platonic Dialogues we have the seeds of the 
mysticism which attained its full growth in the 
great school of Alexandria, seeds fated to develop 
according to the necessary laws which govern the 
growth of ideas. Plato seeks out, in the multitude 
of individual, variable, contingent things, their 
principles, to which they owe what they possess of 
general, of durable, that 1s to say, their ideas. 
These he reaches by stripping finite things of their 
limitations, their individuality. And above the 


~= 


VI. | “MAGNUS ILLE PLATONICUS.” 261 


hierarchy of ideas—the first of them—is the 
Sovereign Principle, the Supreme Unity, Absolute 
Beauty, Absolute Truth, Absolute Good, the life of 
our life and the light of spirits. The Neo-Plato- 
nists, going beyond their master, but following 
logically his method, deny to this Divine principle 
diversity of attributes, they divest it wholly of 
finite conditions. They make it uncharacterized, 
abstract, innominate, a simple undetermined 
essence—for they agree with Spinoza, ‘‘ Omnis 
determinatio negatio est ’’—transcending existence 
and not cognizable by reason. It is in the soul’s 
intuition of this Supreme Reality, in apprehension 
of unity with it, that Plotinus,* the greatest of his 
school— magnus ille Platonicus,” St. Augustine 
calls him—places the summum bonum. Half dust, 
half deity, he deems, is man, but the soul, divine 
in its nature, a portion of the Divinity imprisoned 


* Wor some exceedingly interesting and acute remarks on 
Plotinus, see Schopenhauer’s Lragmente zur Geschichte der 
Philosophie, § 7 Schopenhauer holds—and gives weighty 
reasons for holding—that the doctrine taught by this very con- 
siderable thinker, and by the Neo-Platonists generally, was essen- 
tially Indo-Egyptian, the Platonic philosophy merely serving 
as a vehicle wherein to convey it. ‘‘Plotinos.. .- und die 
Neuplatoniker tiberhaupt, nicht eigentliche Philosophen, nicht 
... Selbstdenker sind ; sondern was sie vortragen ist eine fremde, 
iiberkommene, jedoch von ihnen meistens wohl verdauete und 
assimilirte Lehre. Es ist namlich Indo-Aegyptische Weisheit, 
die sie der Griechischen Philosophie haben einverleiben wollen 
und als hiezu passendes Verbindungslied, oder Uebergangsmittel, 
oder menstruum, die Platonische Philosophie, namentlich ihrem 
in’s Mystiche hiniiberspielenden Theile nach, gebrauchen.” 


262 THE INNER LIGHT. [cH 


in this house of clay (just as, according to the 
similitude of the Upanishads, the light shining in 
many houses is one with the sun) is the real Self. 
To deliver it from the prison where it languishes, 
explating the sins committed in former existences, 
is the one true end. And the way to attain thereto 
is a Via Purgativa, a way of purification from 
earthly desires, of complete abstraction from phe- 
nomenal things, which leads to annihilation of self, 
to abolition of consciousness, until in the transcen- 
dent state of ecstasy (€koraous) the distinction 
between the intelligent subject and the intelligible 
object ceases: the Supreme Perfection is seen, not 
without—os é d\\e—but within, and unity is 
gained. This is precisely the ecstatic vision of 
Vedic theosophy, and they who enjoy it lose them- 
selves in the one and only Self, as rivers lose 
themselves in the sea. It is not substantially 
different from that attainment of perfect indeter- 
mination, utter impersonality, called by the Bud- 
dhists Nirvana, a bliss, we must remember, which 
according to the Book of the Great Decease, a man 
‘while yet in this visible world may bring himself 
to the knowledge of, and continue to realize, and 
see face to face.” Death does but set the seal to 
this union with the Supreme Reality. ‘‘I go,” 
said the dying Plotinus, ‘‘to bear the Divine 
within me to the Divine in the universe.” 

These words of Plotinus might no less fitly have 
been uttered by a Moslem mystic than by a Vedic 


VI. | THE DIVINE PROXIMITY. 263 


theosophist or a follower of Gotama. The late 
Professor Palmer * held Sifism to be really the 
development of the primeval religion of the Aryan 
race. Certain it is that its root idea is identical 
with the root idea of the Upanishads. ‘The 
spiritual life is usually described by the Sitite 
writers under the allegory of a journey, the goal of 
which is union with God. But at the outset, we 
meet with a paradox. It is one of their maxims 
that there is no road from man to God, because 
the nature of God is illimitable and infinite, 
without beginning or end or even direction, 
whereas the perception of man’s understanding, 
‘the intelligence of life,’ as the Prophet calls it, 
is restricted to the finite. It is by a Divine light, 
‘the light in the heart,” in Mohammed’s phrase 
(‘the light of God,” the Safite writers commonly 
term it), that the Divine proximity 1s revealed : 
that mysterious proximity spoken of in the Qu’rdn, 
“He is with you wherever you are,” and hidden 
from man by the illusion of the senses. And so 
Jelal, the great Sifite saint and poet, in the Mesnevi: 
‘Beyond our senses lies the world of unity. 
Desir’st thou unity ? Beyond the senses fly.” 

The first stage in the journey is the purification of 
the heart from worldly impressions and desires, 
from the animal, the brutal, the fiendish, by the 

* See his Oriental Mysticism, Pref. p. x1. Iniwhat follows 


regarding Moslem mysticism I have largely availed myself of 


this work. 


264 THE INNER LIGHT. [ CH. 


study of the Quw’rdn, and the practice of its 
precepts and the discipline of asceticism. ‘Thus 
does a man attain to self-knowledge, and thus does 
he soon arrive at the Divine light. Now this ight 
is the nature of God, and hence the verse of the 
Mesnevi : 

“Tam not I: the breath I breathe is God’s own breath.” 


Similar sayings are common in the Sitfite books. 
When the traveller acknowledges in his heart, they 
tell us, that God only always was, that God only 
always will be, his eyes are opened to the inner 
meaning of the formula, ‘‘There is no God but 
God,’’ and he has closed the door upon existence 
and non-existence. He who has reached thus far 
has performed what is called the journey to God. 
It remains that he journey 7m God, drawn on to 
ever closer union by the splendour and sweetness of 
the Divine perfections, until he is lost in the ocean 
of the Divine love,* reabsorbed in the Divine intelli- 
gence-—the true end and purpose of his existence. 
Professor Palmer describes the system of the 
Safis, which he considers to steer a mid-course 
between the Pantheism of India and the Deism 
of the Qu’rdn, as an attempt to reconcile philo- 
sophy with the Moslem revelation, by assigning 
a mystical and allegorical interpretation to all 
religious doctrines and precepts. For myself, 
* Compare Keble— 


‘Till in the ocean of Thy love 
We lose ourselves in heaven above,”’ 


VI. | CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. 265 


I must say that I see no great difference between 
the Indian and the Stfite mystics in respect of 
their Pantheistic tendencies. Indeed, what I have 
written will, I think, sufficiently show that the 
mysticism of the Upanishads, the Neo-Platonists, 
and the Sifites is substantially identical. Let us 
come now to the fourth great mystical school, 
the Christian, which although largely influenced 
by Plotinus and his followers, through the writings 
of St. Augustine and still more of Dionysius, the 
so-called Areopagite, is clearly marked off from 
all other schools by its doctrines of the Trinity 
and creation. In Catholic theology, the three 
Persons of the Godhead are conceived of under 
the similitude of a Divine circle having no 
necessary relations save those which unite them ; 
self-sufficient and not implying any other exist- 
ence. Moreover, the universe is regarded not as 
engendered by God, nor as emanating from the 
Divine substance, but as freely created out of 
nothing. A great gulf, an infinite abyss, is held 
to separate the Creator even from the highest and 
most perfect of creatures; a difference not of 
degree but of essence, to divide the human person- 
ality from the Divine. Still, Christian, like all 
other mysticism, aims at grasping the Ultimate 
Reality, at direct communion with the Highest, 
and professes to open a way of escape from the 
blinding tyranny of sense, to transcend the veil 
of illusory phenomena, and to set free its votaries 


266 THE INNER LIGHT. [cu. 


by an inward vision. The fundamental thought 
of the Christian religion is that there are two 
orders, commonly called nature and grace; the 
one discernible by sense and understanding, the 
other by a spiritual sight. From the first until 
now the mystic light of Tabor, before which the 
phenomenal world fades away into nothingness, 
has ever burned at the inner shrine of Christianity. 
Thence has come the illumination of those who, 
age after age, have entered most fully into the 
‘secret of Jesus; thence are the bright beams 
which stream from the pages of St. John’s Gospel, 
St. Augustine's Confessions, The Imitation of Christ, 
The Divine Comedy, The Pilgrim’s Progress. The 
supreme blessedness of ‘man, as all Christian 
teaching insists, is the vision, in the great Here- 
after, of Him who is the substance of substances, 
the lfe of life, who alone, in the highest sense, 
is—‘‘ | am,” His incommunicable name—and who, 
even in this world, is seen by the pure in heart. 
‘‘ External nature,’ St. Bernard writes, ‘‘is but 
the shadow of God, the soul is His image. The 
chief, the special mirror in which to see Him is 
the rational soul finding itself.’”’? And he continues, 
‘If the invisible things of God are understood 
and clearly seen by the things which have been 
made, where, I ask, rather than in His image 
(within us) can be found more deeply imprinted 
the traces of the knowledge of Him? Whosoever 
therefore thirsteth to see his God, let him cleanse 


vi] ALLEGORIES. ' 267 


from every stain his mirror, let him purify his 
heart by faith.’* The substance of Christian 
mysticism is presented in this passage of St. 
Bernard. The allegories used by spiritual writers 
to expound it are various. St. Bonaventura treats 
of the Journey of the Soul to God, St. John 
Climacus of the Ladder of Paradise, St. Teresa 
of the Interior Castle. But their doctrine is ever 
that which, as we have seen, is so emphatically 
enforced by the great non-Christian schools of 
mysticism, that the Being of Beings is cognizable 
only by the purified mind. At first the Supreme 
Reality appears to the inner eye as darkness, 
whence Dionysius the Carthusian tells us, ‘‘Mystica 
theologia est ardentissima divini caliginis intuitio.”’ 
This apparent darkness is, however, in itself light, 
dazzling and blinding in its splendour, and it 
gradually becomes visible as such, when the 
spiritual vision is purged and strengthened and 
renewed by the stripping off of all love for the 
relative, the dependent, the phenomenal, and by 
the assiduous practice of all moral virtues. The 
reader who will consult the books of mystical 
theology—for example, the great treatise of 5t. 
John of the Cross, called The Dark Night of the 
Soul—will find all details of this process. It is 
an active process at first, but by-and-by changes 
into a passive, wherein the soul undergoes search- 


* De Domo Interiori, c. 6. This tractate is sometimes attri- 


buted to Hugh of St. Victor. 


268 THE INNER LIGHT. — [cH. 


ing torture. There are pages in the writings of 
St. Catherine of Sienna and in those of Angela da 
Foligno, to mention no others, which I can only 
describe as appalling. To the Purgative succeeds 
the Illuminative, and to this the Unitive Way, 
and silence is accounted an indispensable help for 
walking in these paths of holiness. ‘‘ Sacrum 
silentium,’’ St. Bonaventura calls it, and he 
reckons two stages; the first in speech, the second 
in thought. ‘The perfection of recollection,” he 
says, “‘is for a man to be so absorbed in God as 
to forget all else and himself also, and sweetly 
to rest in God, every sound of mutable thoughts 
and affections being hushed.’’* ‘Thus does the 
soul attain to that union with its Supreme Object 
which is brought about by the love of God, and 
which Gerson terms “‘ transformation.” ‘* Amor,”’ 
says this Doctor Christianissimus, ‘‘ rapit ad ama- 
tum et ecstasim facit;’’ and ecstasy he describes 
as a state of the mind which not Only weakens, 
but, for the time, annihilates all the inferior 
powers. It is a state in which a man passes out 
of himself, and the ordinary cognitive faculty 1s 
transcended; the body seems as dead and the 
senses are hushed, but the will, retaining full 
vigour, is absorbed in God. 


Enough has perhaps been said to indicate, 


* De Profectu Religiosorum, c. 1. 


V1. | “FINE AS THE EDGE OF A RAZOR.” 269 


if but in outline, and as by a few strokes of a 
pencil, the main features of the four chief systems 
of mysticism which the history of the world ex- 
hibits to us. It is hardly necessary to remark 
upon the dangers which, in greater or less 
degree, are incident to them all. A pregnant 
saying of the Upanishads declares the Path of 
Release to be ‘‘ fine as the edge of a razor.’’ On 
one side of it lie the deep gulfs of madness: on 
the other the abysses of sensuality. The per- 
petual analysis of motives and brooding over 
circumstances, the heightened self-consciousness 
which cannot but arise in a life of contempla- 
tion, the shock caused to this frail tenement of 
clay by perpetual converse with the supersensible, 
are masterful incentives of insanity: eeos Kat 
éppov the Greeks truly said. Again, mysticism 
delights in imagery, and, indeed, can no otherwise 
be expressed or taught, and its images have ever 
been borrowed from the strongest of human 
emotions, the passion of love. Thus the favourite 
text-book of Christian mystics is the Cantwa 
Canticorum, and with them this Hebrew epitha- 
lamium is interpreted as a song of Divine love 
celebrating the nuptials of the soul with God. 
Hence it is said, ‘‘Deus osculatur, amplectitur 
> and again, ‘Anima fruitur Verbo 
sponso.” But in spite of the high and sacred 
meaning which has been shadowed forth by such 
similitudes, and although millions have proved 


animam :’ 


270 THE INNER LIGHT. [ CH. 


that innocence and wisdom are combined in them, 
there are only too many sad and terrible examples 
justifying the melancholy dictum, ‘‘ Qui veut faire 
Pange fait la béte.”’ It is, however, a very palpable 
fact, worthy of being deeply pondered, that in the 
Catholic Church mysticism has been incomparably 
more healthy, more sober, more beautiful, than 
anywhere else. How could it be otherwise when 
the eye of the mystic is ever turned, not upon 
some vague abstraction of the Absolute, but upon 
‘‘God manifest in the flesh,” upon the glorious 
figure of Jesus Christ, full of grace and truth? It 
can hardly be from prejudice, certainly it is not 
from any conscious undervaluing of other religions, 
but nowhere else can I discern such perfect 
specimens of spiritual excellence as Christianity 
affords, as St. Bernard, St. Francis of Assisi, St. 
Philip Neri, St. Francis de Sales, St. Catherine of 
Sienna, and St. Teresa. And it is the doctrine 
and discipline of the Catholic Church that have 
made and fashioned them; it is her symbolism, 
historical, social, visible, that has provided for 
their highest aspirations congruous expression, 
and restrained them within the bounds that may 
not be passed in this phenomenal world. While 
as the type of Christian mysticism, practically 
exhibited ‘“‘for human nature’s daily food,” it 
is enough to point to The Imitation of Christ. 
Most noteworthy, too, is it that when the para- 
mount authority of dogmatic theology has been 


vi] THE ARACHNE CLUE. 271 


lost sight of, the speculations of medieval and 
modern transcendentalists have usually issued in 
Nihilistic Pessimism. Even in mystical writers 
whose orthodoxy is not impugned, we come upon 
statements such as these: that God not only is, 
but also is not, the Infinite Spirit; that He 
transcends both finity and infinity; that He is 
more truly not-Being than Being, and may, not 
improperly, be called Nothing. The reader might 
suppose me to be citing Hegel, but he will find all 
this, and much more to the same effect, in the 
books of medieval mysticism. The theologians do 
not deny that there may be sound sense under- 
lying these transcendent speculations, so long as 
the Arachne clue of authoritative dogma is held 
fast in the labyrinth. Once lose it, and you will 
be compelled to assert either that God is un- 
knowable, or that the inmost essence of the 
Divinity is the clean opposite of what Christianity 
declares it to be. And then God will appear as 
the Supreme Evil, striving to redeem and raise 
itself by evolving the universe: a doctrine 
which was eloquently preached in the Middle 
Ages by the celebrated Dominican Meister Eck- 
hart, and which has received its most complete 
and powerful statement from that stupendous 
genius, Jacob Bihmen. But if the mystic 
transcends time and space, the writer on mys- 
ticism enjoys no such privilege, and I must no 
longer dwell upon this curious and fascinating 


272 THE INNER LIGHT. [ CH. 


subject. My present concern is with what I may 
call the normal aspects of mysticism. I have, of 
course, chiefly spoken of it as manifested in 
clearest relief and fullest development by its great 
lights and philosophical teachers. But we must 
not forget that it has ever been the kernel of the 
religion of the common people, whose instincts 
are, usually, as true as their reasonings are false. 
It is a fact of human nature, and is, therefore, 
exhibited, at all times, in history: it is a fact 
which confronts us to-day. And, in my -judg- 
ment, contemporary mysticism possesses a peculiar 
significance when viewed in the light—or dark- 
ness—of modern philosophical speculation. What 
that significance is I shall now endeavour to 
indicate. 


And first let me set down briefly where, as it 
seems to me, the age is in respect of its meta- 
physics. One of the most hopeful of its character- 
istics is that the license of affirmation, indulged 
by system-mongers, is becoming daily more and 
more discredited. The chief philosophical achieve- 
ment of the last two hundred years has been of a 
kind to check such license ; and Huropean thought, 
after a century of not very fruitful wanderings, is 
going back to Kant. His Critique of Pure Reason 
deals precisely with the question, What are the 


vt] KANT’S DOCTRINE OF NESCIENCE. 273 


limits of sane affirmation ? and we may confidently 
say that none who have not read, marked, learned, 
and inwardly digested it, are competent even to 
discuss metaphysical problems as they present 
themselves to the modern mind. But it is not 
my purpose here to enter upon an examination of 
that great work. My present inquiry is this; 
taking it as it stands, assuming, for the sake of 
argument, that its theory of cognition is substan- 
tially correct, where are we in regard to The Great 
Hnigma of which man ever seeks the solution ? 
that momentous question which, by a law of his 
nature, he cannot keep from asking—the question 
which Nakiketas put to Yama about the Self and 
that which dwells in the great hereafter? Such, 
and no other, is the scope of the argumentum ad 
hominem with which I shall be occupied in the 
remainder of this chapter. 

The Critique of Pure Reason, then, is essentially 
a doctrine of nescience. Our first view of the 
world discloses to us phenomena which we take 
for realities. Kant purges our intellectual vision, 
and shows them to us for mere phantasmagoria of 
sense. And to these phantasmagoria he restricts 
our perception. The human understanding, he 
insists, is shut up within the circle of our sensa- 
tions and conceptions ; these reveal to it merely 
phenomena, and beyond the sphere of phenomena 
all is a void for it. Time and space are mere 


mental forms; they have no reality, that is, no 
T 


274. THE INNER LIGHT. [ CH. 


noumenal externality. The categories—concep- 
tions which exhibit laws a priori to phenomena— 
are indeed ours; they are the moulds in which 
the materials presented by sense perception are 
arranged, and by means of them it is that synthetic 
judgments a priore are possible. But no faculty 
of the speculative reason has any objective worth, 
for the subject imposes its own forms on know- 
ledge, and so makes it subjective. Even what is 
called “the law of causality’? is subjective, a 
regulative principle. Again, what are termed 
‘laws of nature’? are in truth the forms of our 
intelligence which we apply to phenomena. And, 
more than this, the understanding cannot affirm 
anything about noumena—real things, things 12 
themselves. The word finds place in the Critique 
of Pure Reason merely as the antithesis of phe- 
nomena. It expresses, Kant says, a limitary con- 
ception, and is therefore only of negative use. 
Noumena may exist, or they may not exist. All 
that is certain is that no faculty of the human 
understanding can discover anything about them. 
Such, in few words, and those as untechnical as 
the subject permits, are the main outlines of the 
Critique of Pure Reason. Its issue clearly is to 
annihilate dogmatism, affirmative or negative, and 
to warn us against venturing with the speculative 
reason beyond the limits of experience. Its 
practical operation will be evident at once, and 
may be held to warrant the title of Der Alleszer- 


VI. | THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. 275 


malmender, the Universal Crusher, which the 
Germans have given to its author. Take, for 
example, its effect upon the ordinary ‘“‘ proofs of 
the existence of God.” The argument from 
causality is impugned, for if “‘ the law of cause and 
effect’ apply only to the world of the senses, no 
reasoning can be founded upon it which touches 
the conception of a world beyond sense. The 
other well-known Deistic demonstrations fare as 
badly. Kant insists that no unity of thought and 
being is knowable save the unity of experience, 
and that this is the sole realization, cognizable by 
the speculative reason, of the ideal to which men 
have ascribed the name of God. ‘If,’ he urges, 
‘‘the Supreme Being forms a link in the chain of 
empirical conditions, it must be a member of the 
empirical series, and, like the lower members 
which it precedes, have an origin in some higher 
member of the series. If, on the other hand, we 
disengage it from the chain, and cogitate it as an 
intelligible being apart from this series of natural 
causes, how shall reason bridge the abyss that 
separates the latter from the former ?”’ 

Thus does Kant lead us into what may well be 
called ‘‘ the dark night of the soul.’”’ The Critique 
of Pure Reason presents a striking parallel to the 
Via Purgativa of the mystics. The illusoriness 
of the phenomenal world, the impotency of the 
mere understanding to penetrate beyond it to the 
vision of a Reality transcending sense—these are 


= 


276 THE INNER LIGHT. [CH. 


its main lessons. It opens the disciples’ eyes— 
Schopenhauer describes its effect as very like that 
of the operation for cataract upon a blind man— 
but it opens them to behold the great darkness. 
I said just now that it does not enable us even to 
assert the existence of the noumenal. And this 
is true, but it is a half-truth. Kant’s language 
on this subject is not superficially consistent, 
although it is consistent, I think, in a deeper 
sense. He employs the word noumenal to express 
a limitary conception. He gives it a negative 
use. But it is worthy of notice that this 1s pretty 
much the sum of the knowledge of God to which, 
as the mystics of all schools teach, we can attain 
by means of the phenomenal order. They, in 
effect, allow to the human understanding rather 
a negative than a positive ideal of that transcen- 
dent Reality beyond appearances which eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man 
conceived. And so St. Augustine, in the De 
Ordine:* “Of whom there is no knowledge in 
the human soul, save to know how it knows Him 
not;”’ or as we read in the Upanishads: ‘* Words 
turn back from it, with the mind not reaching it.” 
And hence the phrase common to them all shir Pie 
Divine Darkness.” Is there any way in which 
this darkness may be made light for the disciple 
of Kant ? 


* “ Cujus nulla scientia est in anima nisi scire quomodo eum 
nesciat ”’ (ii. 18). 


Vi. | THE PRACTICAL REASON. 277 


The master has answered that question in the 
Critique of Practical Reason, a work the true posi- 
tion of which is very little understood, even by 
some who undertake most confidently to expound 
his teaching. I suppose Heine has done more 
than any one else to mislead the world in general 
about it by the well-known passage in the Ueber 
Deutschland—inimitably witty it is, although one 
could wish that this bitter mocker had spared us 
his flouts and gibes upon so momentous a subject 
—the passage in which he represents the conster- 
nation that ensued when the sage of Kénigsberg 
had stormed the heavenly citadel and put the 
garrison to the sword. All the time-honoured 
proofs—the bodyguards—of the Divine Existence 
destroyed and the Deity Himself deprived of 
demonstration and laid low: supreme mercy, infi- 
nite goodness, the great hopes of the hereafter all 
gone, and the immortality of the soul in its last 
agony : on all sides the groans and rattle of death. 
Old Lampe, the philosopher’s faithful servant, 1s 
in terror and tears at the catastrophe, and lets fall 
the umbrella, with which—a living image of Pro- 
vidence—he had followed his master for so many 
years. Kant’s heart 1s softened, for he is not only 
a great metaphysician, but also a good-natured 
man. ‘No, this will never do,” he reflects. 
“Poor old Lampe must have his God, or there 
will be no happiness for him: and man ought to 
be happy in this world: that is the dictate of the 


278 THE INNER LIGHT. [cu 


Practical Reason. Very well: let the Practical 
Reason guarantee the existence of God.” And so, 
with a wave of the magic wand of the Practical 
Kieason, he resuscitates what the Speculative 
Reason had slain. Old Lampe is consoled, and 
the police cease from turning upon the philosopher 
the eyes of suspicion. 

This excellent fooling of Heine’s represents with 
sufficient accuracy the account of the Critique of 
Practical Reason generally current. But in truth it 
is mere fooling. Kant himself, who may surely be 
accepted as a tolerably good authority on the sub- 
ject, tells us that the second Critique is the neces- 
sary complement of the first: another storey of the 
same edifice. He knew well that there is far more 
in the human consciousness than is explicable by 
‘“‘the pure forms of intuition,” the concepts of the 
understanding, the ideas of reason; he knew well 
that the understanding is not the whole man, and 
that to confine us within the phantasmal circle of 
sense conception, and to shut us off from the 
intelligible world, is to doom us to moral and 
spiritual death. And the opening into this tran- 
scendent region, the revealing agency of super- 
sensual realities he finds in the concept of Duty; 
a concept marked off from the notions of space, 
of time, of substance, and the like, by vast 
differences which prove its objective character. 
Here is the creative principle of morality, of re- 
ligion; more sublime to Kant than the starry 


vi.] THE ILLUMINATIVE WAY. 279 


heavens, and rightly; for what are the starry 
heavens, in his philosophy, but a creation of sense, 
the product of the innate forms of time and space ? 
But the Categorical Imperative is independent of 
time and space. ‘‘ Cogita Deum, invenies st, 
ubi Fuit et Erit esse non possunt. Ut ergo et 
tu sis, transcende tempus.’’* It is the precept 
of St. Augustine, and the Critique of Practical 
Reason is but an effort to accomplish it. To find 
the true Self, Kant transcends time and space and 
the vain shadows of the phenomenal world, and 
reaches that perception of right and wrong wm 
motives, and of the supreme claims of right upon 
our allegiance, which testifies to him of God, Free- 
will, Immortality. ‘‘ We recognize,” he says, “ in 
our moral being, the presence of a power that is 
supernatural.’’ Now this recognition is a direct 
intuition of self-evident truth, pointing to that 
Supreme Reality of whom the Hebrew poet sang, 
‘Clouds and darkness are round about Him, 
righteousness and judgment are the establishment 
of His throne.” Thus does our darkness become 
light. It is the Kantian equivalent of the Illu- 
minative Way of theology: and here the rigid 
analytical philosopher is in accord with all that 
is most mystical in modern literature. When 
Wordsworth testifies of conscience— 


“ As God’s most intimate presence in the soul ; 
And His most perfect image in the world ;” 


* In Joann. Evan. Tract., xxxviii. 10. 


280 THE INNER LIGHT. (eH. 


when Lord Tennyson declares— 


“If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep, 
I heard a voice, ‘ Believe no more,’ 
And heard an ever-breaking shore, 

That tumbled in the Godless deep; 


‘A warmth within the heart would melt 
The freezing reason’s colder part, 
And like a man in wrath the heart 

Stood up and answer’d, ‘I have felt;’” 


when George Eliot proclaims that 


‘In conscious triumph of the good within, 
Making us worship goodness that rebukes, 
‘Even our failures are a prophecy, 

Even our yearnings and our bitter tears, 
After that fair and true we cannot grasp ;” 


they all, in their varying moods, teach Kant’s 
doctrine of the Categorical Imperative; and are 
at one with the mystics of every age in pointing 
to the light guiding from the phenomenal to the 
noumenal world, 


‘Letting us pent-up creatures through 
Into eternity—our due.” 


But though in this doctrine of the Categorical 
Imperative we have the essence of all mysticism, 
it must, I think, be allowed that Hartmann is well 
warranted when he says, “‘ Unfortunately, Kant 
did not attain the same depth of insight in refer- 
ence to a prior forms of intuition, as in the case of 
the forms of thought.” The intuition of duty is 


VI. | A STUPID A PRIORI. 281 


but one of many faculties independent of sense 
perception which, as a matter of fact, exist in 
human nature. Or, to put the matter more 
accurately, that power within us which discerns 
the axioms of eternal righteousness is the very 
same, in root and substance, which grasps the facts 
and interprets the laws of a world beyond appear- 
ances. Unquestionably, there is in man an 
alcOynous THS Wuy7s, a faculty of spiritual perception. 
Take the sense of personality, whereby we know 
the self of ours which is no phenomenon, but 
something more, abiding amid change, and so 
making experience possible: take the sense of 
force, possessing a permanence and reality not 
belonging to the phenomena by means of which 
we apprehend it, or the sense of power, of will— 
surely all these give us a glimpse into the noumenal 
world, an intuition of things in themselves. But 
again, consider the vast region—most real, how- 
ever dim and ill-explored and infested by fools and 
knaves—the region of prescient instinct, of spiritual 
sight and hearing and contact, of abnormal psychical 
states, of seemingly miraculous powers. Nothing 
is easier than for the gainsayer to suspend upon 
his upturned nose the mass of evidence available 
regarding these things, and to take refuge in a 
stupid a priori; but nothing is more ‘unscientific,’ 
if science proceed upon observation and experience. 
I decline, indeed, to follow ‘‘ Esoteric Buddhists ” 
to the cloudy regions of Thibet. I hope I do not 


282 THE INNER LIGHT. (cH. 


wrong them, but I frankly confess that their stock- 
in-trade appears to me to consist of fragments of 
a great religion wholly misinterpreted, and of tricks 
of jugglery imperfectly acquired. Their ‘“‘ Ksoteric 
Buddhism ” seems to me but a shoddy system, the 
worn-out linen of venerable sanctuaries ground 
down with non-adhesive Yankee glue. Still, 
where there is smoke—especially so thick a 
smother—there may be fire. And if the ‘‘ Esoteric 
Buddhists’ will show me the smallest scintilla of 
fact I will respect it, if not them. But let us go 
to a very different teacher, who, whatever we may 
think of his system, is assuredly in some respects 
the sanest of recent Teutonic philosophers. I am 
at a loss to conceive how any candid mind can 
read the section in Hartmann’s great work, wherein 
he discourses of the manifestation of the Un- 
conscious in bodily life, and resist the cogency 
of the data gathered by that most careful and 
critical observer from so many departments of 
physical science. If any fact is clear it is this, 
that not only in man, but in all animate exist- 
ence, down to its lowest forms, we find a per- 
ceptive power transcending sense and reflection, 
and far more trustworthy. The subject is too 
large for me to enter upon. I can only refer 
those of my readers who would follow it out, to 
Hartmann’s masterly treatment of it, merely 
observing here that the evidence for the facts of 
second sight, of presentiment, of presage, is so 


vi.] ESSENTIALLY MYSTICAL PHENOMENA. 283 


various, so abundant, and so overwhelmingly 
corroborated, that in the words of this clear and 
judicial writer, ‘‘ for impartial judges, the absolute 
denial of such phenomena is consistent only with 
ignorance of the accounts of them.” And these 
phenomena, he justly observes, are essentially 
mystical. Well warranted, too, must I account 
him when he reckons as mystics all great artists, 
for they do but body forth, according to their 
diverse gifts, what they have intuitively discerned 
in the high reason of their fancies ; and all philoso- 
phers, so far as they are truly original, both because 
their greatest thoughts have never been the result 
of laborious effort, nay, nor of conscious induction, 
but have been apprehended by the lightning flash 
of genius, and also because their essential theme 
is connected with the one feeling only to be 
mystically apprehended, namely the relation of 
the individual to the Absolute. Of religion I need 
not speak. Every great faith of the world has 
originated in mysticism and by mysticism it lives ; 
for mysticism is what John Wesley called “heart 
religion.”” When this dies out of any creed, that 
creed inevitably falls into the moribund decrepi- 
tude of mere formalism or superstition. 


So much must suffice to indicate the trans- 
cendent importance which mysticism seems to me 


284 THE INNER LIGHT. [ cH. 


to possess in these days, when so many a fair 
philosophy les in ruins, and time-honoured the- 
ologies are threatened with swift extinction, as 
mere collections of meaningless words about unin- 
telligible chimeras. Founded as it is in that 
highest faculty which St. Bonaventura calls “‘ apex 
mentis,’ mysticism is the impregnable citadel of 
the supersensible, a citadel which no Zermal- 
mender shall ever overthrow, though he crush all 
else. But there are two objections to which, in 
concluding this chapter, I must briefly reply. 
First, it is said by an exceeding great multitude— 
Mr. Mill may serve as their spokesman—that 
‘‘whether in the Vedas, the Platonists or the 
Hegelians, mysticism is nothing more nor less 
than ascribing objective existence to the subjective 
creation of our own faculties, to mere ideas of the 
intellect.”’* Surely this is a tyrannous ipse dixit, 
if ever utterance deserved to be so called. Why 
should I believe, upon the authority of those who 
confessedly do not speak as experts, that the choice 
specimens of human wisdom and virtue in all ages 
have been wrong, when they thought themselves 
to be holding communion with supersensible 
Realities? Is not their own account of the matter 
as credible as the hypothesis that they were given 
over to a strong delusion to believe a lie, that 
their highest vision was but a turning about in 
their own thoughts, as in the void inane? No; 


* System of Logic, bk. v. chap. iil. § 4. 


v1. | LOGIC AND LIFE. 285 


when the spirit is perfectly master of itself, when 
passion and interest are stilled for the moment, 
when there is a combined ease and energy of 
thinking which cannot be mistaken for vacancy 
of mind, I defy a man to believe that the intuitions 
of which he is conscious are illusory or merely 
subjective. He may say so when the hour is past, 
and he has been disobedient to the heavenly call- 
ing; but he did not think so when it was present. 
And here I would point to one most unquestionable 
and most significant fact. However strange, it is 
no less certain, that the farther we recede from 
mathematics and the formal teaching of logic— 
or, in other words, the nearer we approach to life 
and its perfections—the more delicate, subtle, and 
easily overlooked are the truths we come upon. 
The surest and most sacred verities are precisely 
those which appear the most fantastic illusions to 
such as have no real, no personal apprehension of 
them, who know them but as notions, and at 
second hand. Thus, who that has not experienced 
the tender passion, can endure the extravagances, 
the unreason, the madness—so he deems—which 
characterize it? But let Benedick fall in love, 
and he will be as insane as the rest OL, Uissyal ne 
true doctrine is that only those are verily and 
indeed out of their minds, out of harmony with 
life and nature, who do not confess the sway of 
the gentle goddess: ‘Alma Venus, que rerum 
naturam sola gubernas! ” Birth, life, family, the 


286 THE INNER LIGHT. [ CH. 


state, the world’s great order are all carried on by 
means of a passion which laughs at syllogisms, 
yet has a higher reason than all logic, which defies 
analysis, yet has ‘“‘its deep foundation set under 
the grave of things.” Now this has a direct bear- 
ing upon that highest kind of love and knowledge 
which makes the universe of the mystics. It is 
precisely in proportion as they do not argue that 
they are convincing ; the secret of persuasion is 
theirs in a transcendent degree which no analytical 
philosopher has ever possessed. It is the easiest 
thing in the world to hold up their imaginations, 
their ecstasies, their visions and revelations to 
scorn as intellectual intoxication or mental dis- 
ease. ‘The hard, the impossible thing for one 
who has held high converse with the sages of the 
Upanishads, with Plotinus, with Jelal, with St. 
Teresa, is to believe that what those great souls 
accounted the prime and only Reality was wholly 
unreal. 

I say ‘‘ wholly unreal.’’? And this brings me to 
that second objection which igs based upon the 
discrepancies and contradictions of mysticism. It 
is an objection that seems to fade away, when it is 
fairly considered. The primary position of the 
mystics is that highest truth is not so much intel- 
lectually known as spiritually felt: ‘‘ cognoscendo 
ignoratur et ignorando cognoscitur.’’ Theirs is a 
doctrine of divine nescience, or, in the words of 
the Areopagite, of negative theology. In the 


VI. ] THE SECRET OF THE KING. 287 


higher moods of spiritual exaltation the under- 
standing is hushed and the light of sense goes out, 
paled before the splendour of the invisible world. 
Thus was it when St. Paul was rapt in ecstasy 
and—whether in the body or out of the body he 
could not tell—heard arcana verba, unspeakable 
words which it is not given to man to utter. 
Thus when St. Augustine and St. Monica held 
that memorable converse at Ostia, and passing in 
contemplation beyond the world of phenomena 
came to their own minds, and transcending self 
reached the Very Self (/dipswm) and were ravished 
and absorbed in the ineffable sweetness of the 
vision. Thus when St. Teresa in the fruition of 
that intimate union with her Divine Spouse, ‘in 
the centre of the soul, where illusion is impossible ”’ 
was instructed by the light which is the life of 
men, without words or the use of any corporal 
faculty, in mysteries ‘too sublime to be spoken 
of in earthly speech, for they are figureless and 
formless.” The feeling of the greatest saints 
has always been ‘‘Sacramentum regis abscon- 
dere bonum est;” it is good to conceal the 
secret of the King. And one reason why this is 
good is because that Divine Secret cannot be 
congruously conveyed in the language of sense 
perception: “‘transumanar significar per verba 
non si poria,’”’ sings Dante in the Paradiso. To 
attempt to render the noumenal in phenomenal 
symbols is, of necessity, to refract it, for the laws 


288 THE INNER LIGHT. (cH. 


of the mind impose their own form upon ideas. 
The straight staff must seem bent when we view 
it in the pool. In our cognition divine things 
are discerned ‘‘ per speculum et in enigmate.”’ 
The looking-glass of the human understanding 
cannot but reflect sensuousimages. ‘The accounts 
of the mystics are necessarily discrepant, and the 
discrepancy is due to the varying symbolisms used 
by them: symbolisms, for the most part traditional, 
inherited from the nation or school to which they 
belong. The very incongruity of human words 
as a vehicle of transcendental truth, accounts 
sufficiently for defects in its presentation. It has 
been well said that the speech of angels is music. 
And who can translate music? In the rendering 
of that celestial language into the tongues of men, 
it is much if any trace of its divine perfection 
remain. Certain it is that in the more popular, 
the more vulgar manifestations of religion, that 
is to say in the religion of the great majority, the 
mystical element, which is its life, will assume 
the most unlovely forms, until for the harmony 
of the spheres you have the howls of the Sal- 
vationists. True, too, is the saying, that the 
common people lke to mix water with the wine 
of their belief. They usually mix a great deal: 
sometimes so much as to drown the precious drop 
from the ‘‘calix inebrians,” ‘‘the chalice of the 
grapes of God.” But it is still there, potent 
in its divine virtue to slake the thirst of human 


vi.] “THE CHALICE OF THE GRAPES OF GOD.” 289 


nature for a good transcending sense ; to lift eyes, 
dim with tears and dull with pain, towards the 
Beatific Vision ; to heal and strengthen feet, sore 
and weary from the rough ways of earth, for the 
steep ascent of Heaven. 


CHAPTER VII. 
THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. 


SHALL we say, then, that the solution of The Great 
Enigma is given by what is called Theism of the 
natural order? A Theism at once rational and 
mystical, revealed by the world without us, and by 
the world within us, exhibiting the Absolute and 
Eternal as the First Cause and Final End of an 
universe where all is causation and finality, and 
as a Present Deity, whose temple is the purified 
heart, whose voice is the enlightened conscience? 
Assuredly we may say this. But is this all we 
can say? Or is there, among the world’s religions, 
any to which, without making our reason blind, 
or our conscience dumb, we may join ourselves, 
as filling up the revelation of the external and 
internal universe, aS corresponding with those 
religious instincts which we may assuredly trust, 
for they are part and parcel of our nature, as 
exhibiting the realities of which our sentiments 
are symbols ? 

It is held, as we all know, by many excellent 
and distinguished persons that this last question 


CH. VII. | RELIGIOSITY. 291 


must receive a negative answer. They make of 
religion merely an emotion, an aspiration, and 
of religions merely temporary and fluxional hypo- 
theses which have served to render the ideal 
accessible to the multitude. Professor Tyndall 
may serve, as well as another, for their spokes- 
man : 


“The error of the priests is this: that they are mechanics, 
not poets; and that they claim objective validity for that which 
springs from the innermost need and nature of man. It is 
against this objective rendering of the essentially ideal and 
poetic, that science, consciously, or unconsciously, wages war. 
Religion is as much a verity of human consciousness as any 
other of its facts, and against it, on its subjective side, the 
waves of science beat in vain. But when, manipulated by 
sacerdotal constructiveness, and mixed with imperfect or in- 
accurate historical data, and moulded by misapplied logic, it 
makes claims which traverse our knowledge of nature, then 
science, as in duty bound, stands as a hostile power in its path. 
Sooner or later, among thinking people, the temporary and 
fluxional rendering of religious mysteries will be abandoned, 
and the ideal will be universally recognized as capable only of 
ideal approach.” * 


* A widely read novelist translates this doctrine ad populwm 
into the following profession of faith, put into the mouth of her 
hero. ‘‘My friends, the man who is addressing you to-night 
believes in God and in Conscience, which is God’s witness in the 
soul, and in Haperience, which is at once the record and the 
instrument of man’s education at God’s hands. He puts his 
whole trust, for life and death, in God the Father Almighty: in 
that force at the root of things which is revealed whenever a 
man helps his neighbour or a mother denies herself for her 
child : whenever a soldier dies without a murmur, or a sailor 
puts out into the darkness to rescue the perishing : whenever 
a workman throws mind and conscience into his work, or a 


292 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. (ci. 


Now what are we to say of this pronouncement ? 
I really must be permitted to say, plainly, that 
it seems to me a medley of commonplace and 
sophism. I am as ready as Professor Tyndall to 
reject ‘imperfect or inaccurate historical data,’ 
‘misapplied logic,” and ‘‘ claims which traverse 
our knowledge of nature.” But when, in the 
name of ‘science,’ he declares war against the 
‘Cobjective rendering of the essentially ideal and 
poetic,” when he denies the claim to ‘ objective 
validity’ of ‘‘that which springs from the inner- 
most need and nature of man,’’ when he pronounces 
that the ideal is ‘‘ capable only of ideal approach,”’ 
he appears to me, pace tanti viri, to be talking 
grandiloquent nonsense. He might just as reason- 
ably say that because the principle of life 1s 
spiritual and immaterial, we ought to support life 
only by spiritual and immaterial means, and not 
by anything so grossly material as meat and ‘drink. 
The dweller in Cloud-Cuckoo Town may be , able 


— to live on mere abstractions. But assuredly they 


are not sufficient ‘‘ for human nature’s daily food.” 
The subjective and unhistorical religion, or rather 
religiosity, which Professor Tyndall preaches, 
makes God into an impersonal force, with no 
objective character at all, or, at all events, undis- 


statesman labours not for his own end, but for that of the State. 
He believes in an Eternal Goodness, and an Eternal Mind, of 
which nature and man are the continuous and only revelation.” 
—Robert Elsmere, c. xl. 


Vil. | IDEA AND PERSON. 293 


tinguishable from human impulse. To speak of 
Christianity alone, it will be found impossible, in 
fact, to separate the idea of Christ from the person 
of Jesus, and to live by the one without believing 
in the other. If we would drink wine, there must 
needs be a vessel from which to imbibe it. We 
cannot have the contents and no container. The 
starting point of the Christian faith, which itself, 
is, no doubt, spiritual and internal, must always 
be “the sinless years that breathed beneath the 
Syrian blue:” the Word that “wrought with 
human hands the creed of creeds.” It is to the 
very combination of eternal truth with the details 
of the evangelical history, that we must ascribe 
the influence of Christianity over the hearts and 
lives of men. A plausible thing it has often 
seemed to say, ‘‘ Let the facts be as though they 
were not.” But here, if anywhere, Bishop Butler’s 
dictum applies: ‘‘ Things are what they are, and 
their consequences will be what they will be.” 
The facts contain the revelation: the idea without 
the Person is empty. ‘‘A present God.” Yes, 
surely. It is just because Christians believe in a 
present God, that they recognize Him as having 
spoken, at sundry times and in divers manners, 
in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, 
and in these last days unto us by His Son. 
Reject historical Christianity, and in the course 
of a very few years how much definite Christianity 
till be left? Of course, 1. do not say that the 


294 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [ CH. 


assent to a bare intellectual proposition is religious 
faith. No; that is but fides demoniorum. But 
faith, if it is to be anything more than a blind 
instinct, must involve assent to propositions. And 
that it should likewise involve assent to historical 
truths, is simply of a piece with the laws by which 
man lives, and moves, and has his being. He 
never is abstract self-consciousness: he belongs 
to the world of time; he is individual, concrete— 
hic et nunc, the schoolmen say. And the religious 
faith which binds him to a present Deity must 
have the same character. As the Italians say, 
‘‘Yuomo é cosi fatto.’ Such is the nature of 
man and of the religious instinct in man. And 
precisely because it is such, is man led to form 
religious associations. Solidarity is the law of 
our race. No man liveth to himself in any sphere 
or department of his life. If he experiences a 
want, he seeks help from others. If he realizes 
a truth, he desires to communicate it. And this 
holds good of his moral life as of his physical; and 
of his religious life, as of his moral. A common 
cult is a natural necessity. It is also a great 
human bond. There is a true meaning in the 
,word ‘“religio.’”’ Public worship is to the soul 
what an oath is to speech; a tie, an obligation. — 
The personal and conscious relation of the indi- 
vidual with his Creator no more hinders that 
communion with his fellows which we call the 
Church, or is a bar to his receiving light and 


vul.] BODY AND SPIRIT. 295 


strength by means of it, than the fact that every 
man is born of his parents can make it untrue 
that he came from the Almighty.* The spirit of 
religion? Yes. ‘But the Church must provide 
the body in which that spirit is to be lodged. 
... We may as well expect that the spirits of 
men might be seen by us without the intervention 
of their bodies, as suppose that the Object of faith 
can be realized in a world of sense and excitement, 
without the instrumentality of an outward form 
to arrest and fix attention, to stimulate the careless 
and to encourage the desponding. .. . Religion 
must be realized in particular acts in order to its 
continuing alive. There is no such thing as 
abstract religion. When people attempt to worship 
in this (what they call) more spiritual manner, 
they end, in fact, in not worshipping ait alle spec 
In these times, especially, this is why the 


* Compare the fine lines of Schiller : 


‘Nicht allein genug ist sich 
Das Herz; ein irdisch Pfand bedarf der Glaube, 
Das hohe Himmlische sich zu-zueignen. 
Drum ward der Gott zum Menschen, und verschloss 
Die unsichtbaren himmlischen Geschenke 
Geheimnissvoll in einem sichtbarn Leib. 
Die Kirche ist’s, die heilige, die hohe, 
Die zu dem Himmel uns die Leiter baut ; 
Die allgemeine, die Katol’sche heisst sie ; 
Denn nur der Glaube aller stirkt den Glauben. 
Wo Tausende anbeten und verehren, 
Da wird die Glut zur Flamme, und befliigelt 
Schwingt sich der Geist in alle Himmel auf.” 


296 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [cH. 


Church itself is attacked, because it is the living 
form, the visible body of religion, and shrewd 
men know that, when it goes, religion will go 
LOOr ie? 


In what I have just been writing, I have had 
Christianity specially in view. And surely it is 
enough, for our present very practical purpose, to 
confine ourselves to Christianity. True it is that, 
although this religion has been in the world for 
well-nigh two thousand years, it has not as yet, 
in all its various forms, received the allegiance of 
a majority of the human race. Still none of my 
readers, probably, would seriously maintain that 
any other of the world’s creeds can really dispute 
with it the world’s future. Too wild is the 
imagination to be gravely entertained, that the 
progressive races of mankind and the leaders of 
the rest, should prefer the word of Mohammed, of 
Zoroaster, of Gautama to the word of Jesus Christ ; 
should turn away from the Bible to the Qu’ran, 
the Avesta, or the Pitakas. The issue before us 
is between Christianity and no religion. And 
the question which I shall proceed to discuss 
is whether there is anything irrational, and 
therefore immoral, in accepting The Christian 


* J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. {i. pp. 


74-77. 


VII. | OUR COMMON CHRISTIANITY. 297 


Synthesis as affording the best answer to The 
Great Enigma. 


Now, what do we mean by Christianity? I 
suppose we may say with Dr. Johnson that it 
means the religion of Christians. But there are 
so many kinds of Christians! Not to speak of the 
ephemeral sects which every day brings forth in 
England and America— 

“Unfinished things one knows not what to call, 

Their generation’s so equivocal!” 
there are, let us say, Catholic Christians, Greek 
Christians, Anglican Christians, there are Nesto- 
rians and Monophysites, Wesleyan Methodists, 
and Congregationalists. What have all these in 
common? ‘They have this, at all events, in 
common with one another, and with most other 
varieties of the Christian religion, that they 
regard baptism as a solemn initiation into Chris- 
tianity — baptism administered, according to 
universal practice, in the Name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Chris- 
tianity is, in its simplest reduction, the doctrine 
concerning God summed up in the baptismal 
formula—the most ancient and, in a sense, the 
most authoritative, of all its formulas—the accept- 
ance of which has, from the first, been required as a 
condition of admission into the Christian society. 


298 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [ CH. 


Is this doctrine discredited by the achievements — 


of the modern mind ? 

First, then, as to belief in an Almighty Father, 
of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are 
all things, it may suffice to refer to what I have 
said in previous chapters of this volume. I very 
confidently maintain that if the intellect is valid, 
the true conclusion can never be Atheism or 
Agnosticism, but must be Theism of some kind. 
The proposition of St. Paul has not been refuted : 
‘The invisible things of Him from the creation of 
the world, are clearly seen, being understood by 
the things that are made, even His eternal power 
and Godhead.” And it is most interesting, and 
most satisfactory, to find the able and popular 
writer whom I have selected as the spokesman 
of Scientific Agnosticism, constrained to employ 
language which appears to involve a recognition of 
this great verity. He declares it absolutely certain 
that we are ‘‘ever in presence of an Infinite and 
ternal Energy from which all things proceed.” * 
I find it difficult to reconcile this declaration with 
his dictum in First Principles, that “ the Absolute 
cannot, in any manner or degree, be known, in the 
strict sense of knowing.’ Surely to know with 
absolute certainty the Being, the Causal Energy, 
the Omnipotence, the Eternity of the Absolute, is 
to know, in the strictest sense, a great deal about 
it. If we add to this, as Mr. Spencer enjoins us 


* Nineteenth Century, Jan., 1884, p. 12. 


re 


VII. | “A GOD THAT CAN INTEREST US.” 299 


to do, that the universe is obedient to law and 
that this law is beneficent, we have a doctrine 
singularly like that with which the Apostle’s Creed 
opens—‘‘ I believe in God the Father Almighty, 
Maker of Heaven and Earth.”’ 

Reason seems a sure thing. Its conclusions are 
unimpeachable. But they leave us cold. ‘God 
as God,” Feuerbach has well said, ‘‘ the infinite, 
universal, non-anthropomorphic Being of the 
understanding has no more significance in religion 
than a fundamental general principle has for a 
special science ; it is merely the ultimate point of 
support, as it were, the mathematical point of 
religion.” * Objective Reason, Hternal Knergy, 
Supreme Cause, Absolute Being, Perfect Person- 
ality—these conceptions, august as they are, by 
no means suffice for the needs, either of our | 
intellect or of our emotions. We want, in Kant’s 
happy phrase, ‘‘a God that can interest us.” Our 
conceptions of Him are, and cannot keep from 
being, anthropomorphic : f that is to say, they are 
conditioned by the essential limits of our nature. 
It may, in a sense, be said, that we incarnate God 
by a necessity of our intellectual and spiritual 
existence. ‘Humanity,’ observes M. Renan— 
who irresistibly reminds me, from time to time, of 
Balaam, the son of Beor—‘‘ Humanity will have a 


* Das Wesen des Christenthums, c. 3. 
+ As Aristotle points out: Ta eidy trav Oedv aopolovaw éavTots 
ot dvOpwror (Pol. i. 2). 


300 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [cH. 


God at once finite and infinite, real and ideal. It 
loves the ideal, but it will have that ideal personi- 
fied. It will have a God-man.’’* This truth is 
writ large on every page of the history of religions. 
Of the endless Oriental avatars I need not speak. 
But perhaps we seldom realize how familiar the 
idea of Divine emanations was to the Hellenic 
mind. Hence it was that philosophers found 
small difficulty in reconciling the popular poly- 
theism with the conception of the Divine Unity to 
which many of them had attained. The inferior 
deity, emanating from the Supreme Principle, 
made that union between the absolute and the 
relative, between abstract being and the sensible 
world, for which there is so unquenchable a 
longing in the human heart. ‘The claim of Chris- 
tianity is definitively to satisfy this longing. It 
| presents Christ to the world as ‘‘ the image of the 
invisible God,’’ in whom the eternally idea] has 
become the historically real: the Adyos @etos, the 
thought of the Infinite and Eternal, made flesh 
and dwelling among us: the realization of the 
Divine Will in the moral and religious order: ‘‘ the 
desire of all nations.” Will this claim any longer 
stand? Or is it true that “the good Lord Jesus 
has had His day’’ ? 

Let us consider it. In the first place, what do 
we really know about Jesus Christ? It is certain 
that such a Teacher did actually live and die 


* Le Prétre de Nemi, act ii. sc. 6. 


vi.) WHAT MADE THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH? 301 


eighteen hundred years ago, and that the results 
of His life and death are with us to this day, in 
the religion which bears His name. Christianity 
is a fact in the world’s history: ‘ce fait fécond, 
unique, grandiose,’ M. Renan calls it: certainly 
not too strongly. What is the explanation of this 
fact? Christianity is a comparatively modern 
word. They spoke originally of ‘“‘the kingdom 
of God” or ‘the Church.’”’ What was it that, so 
to speak, made the Christian Church? If I may 
quote words of my own, “‘It was assuredly no 
system or theory, most assuredly no exhibition of 
thaumaturgic power, which attracted men to Jesus 
Christ, but the irresistible influence of soul upon 
soul. To those who forsook all, and took up their 
cross and followed Him, He exhibited no set of 
doctrines, no code of laws, but Himself, as being, 
in very deed, that truth which is the soul’s 
supreme desire. The gospel which St. Paul, in 
an undoubtedly genuine letter, declares himself to 
have delivered to the disciples at Corinth, was no 
catalogue of dogmas, but the manifestation of a 
Person, who claimed for Himself the heart of man, 
to reign there as in His proper throne.” * All 
this is absolutely beyond question, whatever view 
we take of the date, authorship, and authority of 
the documents which make up the New Testa- 


* Chapters in European History, i. 59. As to the relative 
worth of the sources of evidence concerning the teaching of 
Christ, see p. 52 of the same volume. 


302 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. (cH. 


ment. ‘The person of Christ, in whom, as they 
believed, dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily, was all in all to those early disciples, and 
was the direct source whence they derived their 
rule of life, in its highest and lowest details.’’ 
And as it was in the first age of Christianity, so 
has it been throughout the ages since. Amid all 
mutations of the social order, in all diversities of 
physical environment, through all our political and 
intellectual revolutions, the life lived “ in loveliness 
of perfect deeds” has been the supreme type 
and the great exemplar of the foremost races of 
the world; the imitation of Christ has been a 
never-failing fount of all that has been noblest in 
individual action, of all that has been most precious 
in moral civilization. Of His fulness have eighteen 
centuries received, each finding in Him the ideal 
to satisfy their differing aspirations: the character 
answering to their loftiest conceptions : the perfect 
and all-sufficient standard of right thought and 
right doing. What a colossal fact is this, com- 
pelling us to exclaim with the Roman soldier, who 
stood beside Him in His supreme humiliation, 
“Truly this was the Son of God”! There is that 
in us—we cannot rid ourselves altogether of it, try 
how we may—that enforces us to see in great men 
and great deeds something divine. And what man 
so great as this? What deeds so great as His? 
And who, among the world’s teachers, makes such 
transcendent claims? ‘‘No man knoweth the 


vu.| “THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD.” 303 


Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man 
the Father, save the Son: and he to whomso- 
ever the Son will reveal Him.” ‘The brightness 
of the Father’s glory and the express image of His 
substance,’ says the writer of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. The revealer of that attribute of the 
Infinite and Eternal, of which our eyes discern 
but imperfect evidence in the sensible universe, 
full of suffering as in the transitory present, so in 
the boundless past and the boundless future: for 
by Him ‘the kindness and love’’ of the Supreme 
appeared. I do not say that He has given us a 
metaphysical solution of that heart-bewildering, 
soul-subduing problem of evil; but at all events 
He has mitigated its severity by His manifestation 
of the infinite compassion of the Divine Father. 
Christianity has been called ‘‘Stoicism plus a 
legend.” But what a legend! The crucifix its 
symbol, and ‘Sic Deus dilexit mundum,”’’ its 
interpretation ! 
‘* Conjecture of the worker by the work. 

Is there strength there? Enough. Intelligence ? 

Ample. But goodness in a like degree? 

Not to the human eye, in the present state : 

An isosceles deficient in the base. 

What lacks there of perfection fit for God 

But just the instance, which this tale supplies, 

Of love without a limit ? So is strength, 

So is intelligence ; let love be so, 

Unlimited in its self-sacrifice, 

Then is the tale true, as God stands complete. 


Beyond the tale I reach into the dark, 
Feel what I cannot see, and so faith stands.” 


304 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [ CH. 


‘Tn a world where ‘men sit and hear each 
other groan, where but to think is to be full of 
sorrow,’ it is hard,’’ Mr. John Morley allows, ‘‘ to 
imagine a time when we shall be indifferent to 
that sovereign legend of Pity.’* Hard in- 
deed! What is left of Christianity, do you ask ? 
Christ is left. At this moment His will is the 
strongest spiritual force energizing throughout the 
world. Now, as for eighteen centuries, the chil- 
dren of men need but touch the hem of His 
garment to be made whole of whatsoever disease 
they have. Who can believe that He shall ever 
be numbered among the dead gods? Nay, He is 
alive for evermore, ‘‘an ideal of humanity now 
valid for all men, at all times, and throughout all 
worlds.” + ‘The good Lord Jesus has had His 
day.” “Had?” the sister replies, “Had? has it 
come? It has only dawned; it will come by-and- 
by.’t In the “young child with Mary His 
mother,’ mankind will ever more and more dis- 
cern the noblest, the most elevating of types; 
will find an inexhaustible fount of tenderness, 
of purity, the one well of life in the desert of 

* Compromise, p. 156. Mr. Morley adds, “ We have but to in- 
corporate it in some wider gospel of Justice and Progress.” By 
all means—if he can find one. I venture to doubt if it has been 
revealed to him by his “spiritual fathers,” as he calls them 
(Rousseau, i. 5), the philosophes of the last century. 


+ Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 


p. 76. 
+ See Lord Tennyson’s most pathetic poem, The Children’s 
Hospital. 


vil.} THE REVELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 305 


existence. The Man of Sorrows will reign from the 
Pree over an everlasting kingdom, and with a 
dominion that endureth throughout all ages. We 
have His own word for it—neither was guile found 
in His lips—‘ Heaven and earth shall pass away, 
but My word shall not pass away.”’ 

But external nature and human history are not 
our only sources of knowledge. The first fact 
about me is that I—the thinking being—exist.* 
That is the most certain of all my certitudes, the 
one reality of which it is impossible for me to 
doubt: and it is the true starting-point of all 
philosophy. The fleeting phenomena of conscious- 
ness are bound together and made intelligible by 
the ego, which, manifesting itself in and through 
them, declares that it abides among all changes, 
and does not change with them. By the same 
intellectual power we affirm the reality of the non- 
ego, of a world of sense and matter which is some- 
thing more permanent than the phenomena dealt 
with by physical science. This process of objec- 
tive affirmation is a primary fact of our intellectual 
life, revealing to us the ego and the non-ego as 
things in themselves. A permanent self and the 
unity of self-consciousness are the essential foun- 
dations of all philosophy, properly so called: of 
every rational account of man. Now one of the 
primary facts of consciousness is the feeling of 
ethical obligation. It is a fact abundantly verifi- 


* See what I have written on this subject at p. 239. 
x 


506 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. (oH. 


able, its simplest expression being ‘‘ Thou ought- 
est;’? and it is the starting-point of morality. 
Tt is as real, as undeniable, unless we choose to 
close the eyes of our understanding (than which 
nothing is easier) as is the fact of sense-perception. 
As surely as consciousness reveals to me, in the 
ordinary exercise of my faculties, myself, and an 
objective world not myself, so surely does it 
reveal to me, through the feeling of moral obli- 
gation, a Higher than I, to whom that obliga- 
tion binds me. This Kant deemed the surest 
revelation of the Divine. ‘‘ Ethic,” he writes, 
‘‘issues inevitably in religion, by extending itself 
to the idea of a sovereign moral Lawgiver, in 
whose will that is the end of creation, which at 
the same time can be, and ought to be, man’s 
chief end.” * And here the great philosopher of 
these latter days does but express, in his own 
language, what has been delivered, in divers man- 
ners, by the world’s spiritual teachers, of all creeds, 
in all ages. Here, too, I find, as it seems to me, 
the answer to Kant’s own doctrine that the nature 
of God is not the object of experience. I venture 
to say that he takes experience in too narrow a 
sense. We must take it in its totality. We must 
accept the testimony of our whole being. And 
surely we have experience of God through our 
moral nature. Consider the emotional element in 


* Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Vor- 
rede zur ersten Auflage. 


vi] “SPIRITUS DOMINI REPLEVIT ORBEM.” 307 


ethics. ‘The wicked flee when no man_pur- 
~ sueth.” No man pursueth. From whom, then, 
do they flee? Why do they feel that they violate 
the moral law at their peril? It is because ‘in 
the ultimate penetralia of the conscience, the 
Living Spirit of God himself is met, it may be 
unconsciously, it may be consciously.” * And 
‘the moral law first reaches its integral meaning 
when seen as impersonated in a Perfect Mind, 
which communicates it to us, and lends it power 
over our affections, sufficient to draw us into 
Divine communion.’’f, Consonant with this is 
the teaching of Plato in the Meno, that even 
ordinary virtue, which has the praise of men, is 
of Divine inspiration. Every impulse after good, 
every thought in which we forget ourselves, 
every action in which we sacrifice ourselves, is 
an influx of the Divine Spirit into our spirits. 
The direct revelation of the personal God is that 
which is made to the personality of man. ‘Spiritus 
Domini replevit orbem.’”’ This is that Wisdom— 
Sancta Sophia—whereof the son of Sirach speaks, 
that ‘‘in all ages, entering into holy souls, maketh 
them friends of God and prophets.” ‘I believe 
in the Holy Ghost.’”’ Surely this stands as firmly 
now as it did eighteen hundred years ago. How 


* Martineau’s Address to the Students of Manchester New 
College at the opening of the Session 1881-2, p. 17. 

1 Martineau’s A Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 29. The italics 
are mine. ; 


308 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. (CH. 


can it pass away? We have ‘‘the witness in our- 
selves.’ ‘* Prope Deus est,’’ says Seneca, ‘‘ tecum 
est, intus est; Sacer intra nos Spiritus sedet, bono- 
rum malorumque observator et custos; hic prout 
a nobis tractatur, ita nos tractat; bonus vero vir 
sine Deo nemo est.’ ‘‘ So long as there is in the 
human heart one fibre to vibrate to the sound of 
what is true, pure, and honest, so long as the in- 
stinctively pure soul prefers purity to life, so long 
as there are found friends of truth to sacrifice their 
repose to science, friends of goodness to devote 
themselves to useful and holy works of mercy, 
woman-hearts to love whatever is worthy, beautiful, 
and pure, artists to render it by sound and colour 
and inspired accents—so long God will live in us. 
Est Deus in nobis.” * 


It appears to me, then, that external nature, 
human history, and our own consciousness, har- 
monize clearly with the conception concerning 
the Infinite and Eternal which is of the essence 
of Christianity. The genesis of that conception, 
although, no doubt, an interesting topic of his- 
torical inquiry, is of no moral or religious impor- 
tance whatever. It is enough that Christianity 
possesses the conception, and that it is true.t It 


* Renan, Nouvelles Etudes @ Histoire Religieuse, p. 531. 
+ It must not be supposed that I am endeavouring to prove 


Vu. | RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. 309 


will, however, be said: That is all very well; but 
Christianity, as it comes before us, means a great 
deal more than that: it is not merely a religion: 
it has become a theology: there is our diffi- 


culty. Well, the difficulty is by no means a new 
one. 


“Formerly,” says St. Hilary, “the word of the Lord, ‘ Go and 
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost,’ was enough for the faithful... . 
But now, through the faults of heretics and blasphemers, we 
are compelled to do what is not permitted: to scale the lofty 
peaks: to express the inexpressible: to presume beyond what 
is given to us. Instead of accomplishing by faith alone what 
had been commanded us—to adore the Father, to venerate with 
Him the Son, to be filled with the Holy Ghost—we are com- 
pelled to elevate our humble speech to the point of making it 
tell forth the ineffable, and are enforced to fault by the fault 
of others: and thus what should have remained shrouded 
in the religion of souls, is exposed to the peril of human 
language.” * 


So this champion of orthodoxy—the author, as 
geems most probable, of the Athanasian Creed—a 
witness beyond suspicion. I can well believe that 
his words, coming to us across fifteen centuries, 
will awaken an echo in many ingenuous minds. 
“We have no sort of objection,” I fancy I hear 


the Christian doctrine of the Trinity by appealing to the facts 
of physical nature, history, and consciousness. I am merely 
contending, for the purposes of this argumentum ad hominem, 
that there is nothing in those facts inconsistent with the theistic 
conception of Christianity, but that, on the contrary, they har- 
monize with it. 

* De Trinitate, |. ii. c. 1. 


310 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [ CH. 


them say, ‘‘to adore the Father, to venerate the 
Son, and to be filled with the Holy Ghost. But 
theological determinations, ecclesiastical theses, in 
a word, the whole vast accretion of dogma! That 
is precisely our real difficulty. And if we excise 
all that from Christianity, should we not perform 
a mortal operation upon the religion itself? ”’ 

Yes, undoubtedly, I think you would. I think, 
moreover, you would be a fool for your pains. 
Nothing is so stupid as an anachronism. Chris- 
| tianity comes before us “‘rich with the spoils of 
time.’”” We may take it or leave it. But if we 
cannot take it as it is, with its doctrines and its 
traditions, we had better leave it. It is hard to 
imagine anything less satisfactory than the results 
attained by the method called rationalistic. Why 
so called? ‘Well, I suppose God knows, I 
don’t.”” For it seems to me extremely irrational. 
Consider, for example, the New Life of Jesus, with 
which Herr Strauss some time ago favoured the 
world. His object there is to disengage what he 
calls the ‘‘legendary”’ from the historic Christ. 
And what an astral phantom is the result! What 
a thing of shreds and patches! What an inco- 
herent mixture of dubiety and dogmatism! 
Primitive Christianity in this nineteenth century ? 
You might as well try to return to the primitive 
fig-leaf. Better to make the best of Catholic 
fulness and of modern sartorial art. I do not, of 
course, deny—what intelligent man candidly can ? 


vu. | THE EVOLUTION OF DOGMA. 311 


—that we may sometimes find difficulties in 
reconciling the positions of dogmatic theology 
with the exigencies of criticism. But it seems to 
me that those difficulties are such as we may 
rightly discount—if I may be allowed the word— 
when we are unable fully to solve them. For 
what is a dogma philosophically considered? It is 
the result of several factors. There is the original 
idea, there is the concrete image, and there is the 
logical deduction. Ideas have a life of their own: 
they germinate in the human mind: they as- 
similate nutriment from all sides. They are like 
the language in which they find expression: so 
long as they are living they change. ‘They, in 
fact, obey the great law of evolution. The view 
of religious dogma maintained by Luther, which 
represents the doctrines of Christianity to have 
sprung fully formed from its Divine Founder, like 
Pallas from the head of Zeus, is as philosophically 
absurd as it is historically false.* The meta- 
physical formulas in which faith embodies its 
ideals, must have antecedents ; they require 
preparation in time. The facts of the Divine 
Life, with their redemptive and recreative energy, 
are not the subject of evolution. The Confessions, 
in which we sum up our appreciation and inter- 
pretation of those facts, are slowly elaborated by 


* The learned Cardinal Laurentius Brancata writes: ‘¢ Multa 
veritates initio ecclesie aut obscure erant, aut penitus ignote.” 


—De Predestin, No. 34. 


312 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [ CH. 


the human intellect. It is impossible to deny this 
without shutting our eyes to the plainest lessons 
of ecclesiastical history. But it cannot, for one 
moment, be allowed that the historical truth of the 
gradual growth of the Christian creed—“ occulto 
velut arbor «vo’’— supplies a valid argument 
against it, any more than it can be allowed that 
facts established by modern exegesis regarding 
the date, authorship, scientific language, or quasi- 
historical statements of the Christian Sacred 
Books, affect their commanding claims upon our 
religious reverence. A very early Christian 
writer, St. Hippolytus, in his curious work, De 
Antichristo, has a passage which may be fitly 
referred to in this connection. He is commenting 
upon the ‘“ great wonder in heaven,” spoken of in 
the Apocalypse: a woman clothed with the sun, 
and the moon under her feet, and upon her head 
a crown of twelve stars; who brought forth a male 
child. The woman, he says, is the Church, always 
giving birth to Christ, the male and_ perfect 
offspring of God, who is styled both God and Man: 
and thus acting as the teacher of all nations. 
The Church, in every age, seems to be bringing 
forth the Eternal Word, formulating it in such 
shape as each age requires. Creeds, Confessions, 
of Faith, Definitions of Doctrines, are as essential 
to religion as words are to thought. There is 
something in us which compels us to reduce to 
system the various aspects of truth. But our 


vi.] THE SYMBOLIZED AND THE SYMBOL. 313 


synthesis must necessarily be imperfect. ‘‘ Verba 
sequuntur non modum essendi qui est in rebus,”’ 
says Aquinas, ‘“‘sed modum essendi secundum 
quod in nostra cogitatione sunt.” To which we 
must add that human language has an essentially 
physical, sensual, materialistic character. This 
is apparent from comparative philology. What, 
indeed, if we weigh the matter well, is a word but 
a phonetic notation of the psychological state in 
which we are placed by phenomena affecting our 
organism? Words now most abstract had origi- 
nally a concrete signification. And so our philo- 
sophical and theological theories, expressed in 
words, what are they but imitations of the 
inimitable ? Those bold and large formulas which 
we call dogmas are indispensable to any teaching 
which has to act upon the masses of men. 
Doctrine is the vertebration of religion. Still it 
must be ever remembered that “Christian teach- 
ing professes to be symbolical and an economy of 
divine things. Every article of faith must be 
construed according to the sense of Goethe’s line: 
‘Alles Vergingliche ist nur ein’ Gleichniss.’’’* 
“The best in this kind are but shadows.” The 
symbolized is greater, and deeper, and older, than 
the symbol. Considerations of this sort may be 
of a twofold use. They may serve to curb the 
“licence of affirmation”? about divine things in 
which some of us are too prone to indulge: to 


* Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, p. 239. 


314 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [ oH. 


check us when we are tempted to speak of the 
Infinite and Hternal as if He were a deeply read 
theologian, an infallible inquisitor, an inerrant 
casuist, a ‘‘magnified non-natural’’ Pope, and not 
so very non-natural after all. They may help 
others to transcend difficulties which they cannot 
solve—possibly from deficiency of knowledge or 
of dialectical skill—and to use as “‘ human nature’s 
daily food”’ the great spiritual verities presented 
in the formulas of inherited Christianity. It has 
been strikingly observed by a powerful French 
writer—no divine, but a man of the world, well 
known as a novelist and a critic— 

“ C’était la paix, cependant, ce dogme, et la communion avec 
les grands génies qui ont cru. Un philosophe sincére avoue 
son impuissance 4 répondre autrement que par des hypothéses 
aux questions d’origine et de finalité. La religion est une 


hypothese entre vingt autres. LHlle a suffi 4 un Pascal, et i un 
Malebranche .... S’ils ne s’étaient pas trompés, cependant ? ” * 


Of course I do not admit that Christianity is 
a mere hypothesis. It is credibile et credendum. 
Its credentials are sufficient for ‘‘men of good 
will.’”’” To such alone is its peace offered; ‘‘ pax 
hominibus bone voluntatis.”’ Aristotle truly 
teaches that, in the moral order, truth is appre- 
hended not only by the intelligence, but by the 
whole soul, ovv O\n 77 Wuxyn. As a matter of 


* Paul Bourget, Hssais de Psychologie contemporaine, p. 83. 


VII. ] THE MORAL ELEMENT IN FAITH. 315 


fact, there is only one way in which Christianity 
ever has made, or ever will make, proselytes in 
the world. Its victories have been won not by 
mere argument—arguments have been well called 
the symbols of something deeper—not by mere 
eloquence, not by the wisdom of this world, but 
by an appeal to those fundamental spiritual 
Instincts of men, whereunto it supremely corre- 
sponds. ‘‘Non in dialectica complacuit Deo 
salvum facere populum suum.” ‘The Christian 
evidences,” Dr. Liddon has excellently observed, 
‘presuppose a certain moral sympathy in an 
inquirer. They are, in fact, moral and not 
mathematical or experimental. They are not of 
so imperative a character as to impose themselves, 
as the sensible experience of an earthquake or of an 
eclipse imposes itself, upon reluctant wills... . 
Christianity expects to be met—if not half way, 
yet to a certain point—by desire based upon a 
clear discernment of its need of knowledge, and 
of its need of strength. If the evidences of 
Christianity were of such a character that no 
honest and educated man could possibly reject 
them without intellectual folly, whatever his 
moral condition or history might be, the Christian 
belief would be, like a university degree, a certifi- 
cate of a certain sort of mental capacity, but it 
would be no criterion whatever of a man’s past or 
present relation to God. 5t. Paul makes faith 
such a criterion ; because faith is a moral as much 


316 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. [ CH. 


as an intellectual act; because it combines our 
sense of moral want with our perception of the 
bearings of moral evidence. Thus a margin of 
deficiency, mathematically speaking, is even 
necessary in the Christian evidences, as a whole, 
in order to leave room for the exercise of faith; 
that vital, emphatic act of the whole soul, by 
which the soul throws itself upon the invisible, 
and thus secures the proper moral objects of 
Christianity itself.’’ * 


So much is certain. But, further, we must 
always remember that “‘ quidquid recipitur secun- 
dum modum recipientis recipitur.” Christianity 
is one thing. Popular conceptions of it are 
another. As I have insisted, all our conceptions 
of spiritual truth are based on data supplied by 
our mode of existence, by our internal perceptions. 
That is to say, they are more or less anthropo- 
morphic. It is a question of more or less. We 
all start, as children, with most human views of 
divine things. And the vast multitude of men 
remain all their lives children, in this respect: 
children in understanding, although in virtue they 
may attain ‘‘ unto a perfect man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’’ Fetishes, 


* Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, Second 
series, p. 216. 


VIL | ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 317 


of one kind or another, these must have. Why 
should they not? ‘‘ Omnis cognitio est secundum 
modum cognoscentis,’” observes Aquinas. ‘The 
wildest legend of the saints current among Spanish 
or Neapolitan peasants is but the vesture in which 
the popular imagination has clothed some spiritual 
truth, has, so to speak, dramatized it and put it 
on the stage. The most revolting form of the 
‘blood and fire’’ gospel yelled forth by British 
Salvationists may serve to render deepest verities 
concerning human sin and divine compassion 
apprehensible by gross and vulgar minds. Professor 
Tyndall stands aghast at ‘“‘the more grotesque 
forms of the theological.’”’ I dare say he has 
cause. But why trouble one’s self about them ? 
‘The most superficial grocer’s back-parlour view 
of Calvinistic Christianity’? was George Eliot's 
account of the late Mr. Spurgeon’s preaching. 
The sufficient answer is that the congregation of 
that excellent man was composed, for the most 
part, of people who were intellectually grocers, 
and who, probably, would have been unable to 
rise to the height of a greater argument than that 
which he ministered to them, even if he had been 
in a position to offer it. But to seek in such 
homiletics the measure of the Christian faith, 1s 
as unwarrantable as it would be to seek the 
measure of Christian charity in what Robertson 
of Brighton called “the snarling gossip of the 
religious newspapers.” My contention is that 


318 THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. | CH. 


there is no more reason in the nineteenth century 
than there was in the first, why the message of 
Christianity should not be received by cultivated 
and intelligent men, who feel their need of it, and 
who will carefully and candidly examine its claims 
for themselves. That it affords us a complete 
explanation of the scheme of things, who pre- - 
tends? We know in part and we prophesy in 
part ; we see through a glass darkly: per specu- 
lum et in enigmate. Mystery encompasses us 
everywhere. ‘‘Lost in the infinite immensity 
of space, of which I know nothing and you know 
nothing, I am in a terrible ignorance of all 
things.” Yes, of the least things as of the 
greatest; of the latest and most ephemeral, as of 
the oldest and most enduring. The mystery 
which a single anthill contains is as insoluble as 
the mystery of the solar system. Add to this 
that, if we escape from the prison of the senses, 
if we penetrate to the noumenal, great and small, 
past and present, are words devoid of meaning. 
What are space and time but mere forms of 
sensibility ? ‘‘ Qui démélera cet embrouillement ? 
Humiliez-vous, raison impuissante: taisez-vous, 
nature imbécile: apprenez votre condition véri- 
table, que vous ignorez. Ecoutez Dieu!” Call 
Christianity a chapel in the infinite, if you will. 
Still it is a sacred shrine where life and death are 
transfigured for us, where we may gaze into the 
eternal realms of Spirit and Deity, where wise and 


VII. | A CHAPEL IN THE INFINITE. 319 


learned, foolish and ignorant, alike, may handle 
everlasting realities, and realize, in their deepest 
experience, the powers of the world to come. 
‘‘Quam terribilis est locus iste! non est hic aliud 
nisi domus Dei, et porta cell.” 


INDEX. 


PAGE 
Absolute, the 
Mr. Spencer’s conception of . : 149-151, 214-220 
presupposed by the Relative . 222 
contradictories in . , . 244 
our human and relative Site ne ihe measure 
of . ; , . 244, 245 
Actus Purus 203 
Agnostic, 
the term invented by Professor Huxley . rane") 
Agnosticism, 
two varieties ee ; : * : ; : DOE. 
Critical : : , : : 3 ; 72-116 
Scientific . - : ; , : : 117-119 
d’Alembert, 
his “ terrible question ” ; cage 


Attributes, the Divine, 
what they are 
Animals, the lower, 


918, 244, 245 


possess an analogon of the moral sense . . 285, 236 
terrible problem offered by . . : . » 251-253 
Anthropomorphism ; : 246, 299, 500, 316 
Aristotle, 
on the moral eye of the sage . 20 
on the idea oe a thing ‘ . 142 
on “energy” 203, 227 
his definition of al 232 
on cognition 233 
Arnold, Dr., 
252 


on the brute creation 


322 INDEX. 


PAGE 
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 
on the intellectual light within us 3 4 ; 3 
on the perfection of man . : : einties 
on the object of the intellect . : ; . 144 
on words and symbols . : : ; uo ks 
Atheism, 
different senses of the word . ; : sl 28 
how employed in the present volume . : 29, 34 
argument on which it is based : ; ; ne eve 
practical importance of . Beste iis 
in Germany . : : : : ; eo 
in England . : ; s 2 89 
in France and the tat races esate al ; 41-66 
how recommended ad populum : ; : cee 7 
and elementary education . : : 4 68, 69 
Athenagoras, 
his vindication of the primitive Christians from the 
charge of Atheism. : ; : : Py Ze) 
Augustine, St., 
on the Bible : ; LOS 
on sensation and abstract fosehtsl : ! a aa ba 
on the incomprehensibility of God . ) P2202 2i6 
on the transcendental . : ‘ A 279 
Baptism . : , : Ry eee 
Bain, Professor, 
on mind and matter . : eels 
on the one ultimate premiss of all snduetion shpat 
Being, 
the category of . Neti t : - 145 
Bentham, 
his method in ethics . ~ . ; ‘ . 184 
on obligation and duty . : 4 : .' 194 
Bernard, Claude, 
on a creative and directive idea : LSS 


Bernard, St., 
on the inner revelation of the Divine . «(i LOOP 267 


INDEX. 


Bible, the, 


doctrine of the plenary inspiration of 30, 88, 105-110, 312 


Bonaventura, St., 


on silence 268 
Boscovitch, 

on space 234 
Bourget, Paul, 

on dogma 314 
Brancata, Cardinal Tarendine: 

on the ignorance of the primitive Church 311 
Buddhism, 

not atheistic ac 

the supreme power Peer itiaed by 234 

on the indestructibility of our doing 253 
Candolle, M. de, 

on finality 210 
Carlyle, Mr., 

his “‘ Pig Propositions” 53 

on the Bible 110 

on the allurements to eore dent 188 
Catechism, the, 

of the Council of Trent. | 

of the Established Church . Al 
Catéchisme du Libre-Penseur, Le 49-46 
Causation, 

Mr. Herbert Spencer’s doctrine of . 129-138 

true doctrine of . 2ue 

Kantian view of 223-225 
Cause, 

a first . , a : : . 211-213, 227-232, 298 
Christianity, 


and ethics 

M. Monteil’s account se 

M. Renan’s reasons for rejecting 
those reasons examined 

Mr. Herbert Spencer’s view of 
Mysticism in 


. 18-25, 160 


04-61 
87-90 
105-115 
160 
265-268 


324 INDEX. 


PAGE 
Christianity—continued. 


and history 4 . : : s 295 

whatit means. - peer 

is it discredited by the elie ens of rite modern 

mind? . : : : : . 298-314 

expects to be met to a ran atti : : aivolD 

and popular conceptions of it : : . 9817-3819 
Church, Dean, 

on the sternness of the New Testament . : . 84 
Cicero, 

his definition of philosophy . : 4 : : 2 

his question as to the origin of the mind c . 232 
Cognition : : ; : : : 140-142, 238 
Coleridge, 

his definition of a miracle. 5 : : Se iwi li 

his definition of metaphysics : “ . 144 

on the sum total of moral philosophy : yon 
Concupiscence, 

proper meaning of the word . ‘ : esos 
Conscience, 

whatitis . : 6 5 22, 195, 237, 306 

Mr. Spencer’s account of . : 170-174, 235-237 

analogon of in lower animals : ee2O6 
Criticism, 

the “ higher ” : : : 7-10, 88, 106, 312 
Critique of Practical Reason, ans : ; : - 277-279 
Critique of Pure Reason, the . : : . 273-276 


Darwin, Mr., 


on Mr. Herbert Spencer ; é : ; ast bd bf 
evidence in his books of purpose in nature : pe CL 
on the evolution of the moral sense , , ad 3 


Deity. See God. 
Dionysius, the Carthusian, 
his definition of mysticism . ; we E265 


Doubt, 
prevalence of, in thisage : : 15-18 


INDEX. 395 


Downes, Mr., 


on Pantheism ioe : : : ; - 4g 
Dubois-Reymond, 
on Force. : : * 129 
Ego, the, . : : : ; 145, 239, 305 
Eliot, George, 
on Mr. Spurgeon’s preaching ; : » S12 
Hmerson, 
on the revelations of the Soul . B54;255 
Ethics 
and Christianity . , : : ; . 18-25, 159 
of Atheism : : : : , 62-70 
true foundations of ; i ; j ; - 98 
of Critical Agnosticism ; . . ; 98-105 
of Scientific Agnosticism : , . 158-197 
two great Schools in. ; 3 : ; PS hes <5 
the two great problemsin_. : d +190 
a revelation of the Ultimate 
Reality . : : 1284, 235, 278; 2799 300,,006 
Evolution : . 126,163, 165, 166, 174, 177, 190, 192, 
194, 196, 212, 311 
Exeter Hall and “the Open Bible ” : ‘ : ey T20 
Failure, 
the argument from : ‘ ; ‘ ~ 209-212 
Fénelon, 
on the Ultimate Reality : ‘ é : ~ 228 
Feuerbach, 
on non-anthropomorphic Deity ‘ : ya cane 
Flourens, M. Gustave, 
on Atheism ; ‘ ; ‘ : : Abe +65 
Force, 
the doctrine of the Persistence of, in Mr. Spencer’s 
philosophy : . 125, 130-136, 148, 162-166, 198 
what we know of ; : 2 : : 24 281 


Franzelin, Cardinal, 
on the source and measure of metaphysical truth . 109 


326 INDEX. 


PAGE 


Gerson, 
on ecstasy . 5 : se ; : ei 268 
Gop, 
speculations concerning ; ee AG 
what is meant by the word in ey pr ono Volume" iy 135 
growth of the conception of . ; : 35-36 
dogmatic denial of ; ; 37, 45-48, 52 
M. Renan on : ; , 96-97 
Mr. Spencer on . : ' : : 122, 146-152 
and absolute laws ! : ; ; . 154, 159 
Sir Robert Peel on beliefin . : 201 
reasons why men ought not to believe in, Pent 207- 225 
grounds for beliefin ; : : . 220-244 
antinomies involved in conception of 3 ree 
Spinoza’s conception of : . 246 
mystical doctrine concerning ‘ : . 254-289 
Christian conception of 4 ; - 297-308 
licence of affirmation concerning. ; . 314 
Good, 
Reynaud on : : : : re aGe 
Laromiguiére on . : : ; : . id. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer on : : : . 167-170 
the Schoolmen on : : I eAL Bo 
Green, Professor T. H., 
on Mr. Spencer’s rad aggregate . ; uy Ld0 
on Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of the penerninn of 
thought . : : : ‘ . cel as 
on necessary truths : : 212283 


Hartmann, E. von, 
on Kant’s defective ce into a priori forms of 


intuition : : : : . » ~ 280 

on non-sensuous perceptive power : - 282-283 
Hegel, 

on Being and Nothing : : : ; . 219 

on the laws of nature . : hig2e 


on personality : : : : . 241 


INDEX. 


Heine, 

on German Atheism 

on the Kantian philosophy 
Helmholtz, 

on great physical discoveries 
Herodotus, 

his question to the priestesses at Dodona 
Hilary, St., 

on the growth of dogma 
Hippolytus, St., 

on the “ great wonder in heaven ” 
Hugo, Victor, 

on the prevalence of doubt 
Huxley, Professor, 

on astronomy and religious beliefs . 

invents the term Agnostic 

his eulogy of Mr. Darwin 

on the growth of “science” . 

on certain theistic philosophers 

on God 


Individuation, 
the problem of 
Intellect, 
the essential nature of . 
and sense d 
self-affirmations of 


Jelalu-d’-Din, 

on ignorant devotion 

on the world of unity 
Joubert, 

his definition of philosophy 


on the authors who have most influence . 


Kant, 
on the moral law . 
on religion and morality 


or 


309 


312 


828 INDEX. 


PAGE 
Kant—continued. 


his definition of the word “God” . : ; 25 
on miracles . ‘ : ‘ 111, 115 
on the three steps in our nenowiotes : : - 148 
on purpose . : : ; : ‘ Ped bi! 
on the Theistic acti eke : 5 : : Hee 
his doctrine of causality ; ; : . 223-225 
on matter . : . : : : ‘ ogee 
On space. : : : : ee ao 
his Critique of Pave Perea) ‘ 4 : . 273-276 
his Critique of Practical Reason : : eel 
on Christ as an ideal of humanity . : ‘ - 304 
on the surest revelation of the Divine. : . 806 
Katha Upanishad, the . : : : : . 256-259 
Knowledge, 
three steps in. : : : : % . 148 
the condition of . ; ; : : : . 145 
what itis . : ; : 5 ; ‘ . 241 
Kosmos. : : : : : : . . 228 
Law, 
the Divine . ‘ : ‘ : ; : = 6a 
the moral. See Ethics. : 5 : : 
physical ‘ : : . : ; . 202 
of evolution, the . A . ; , ea 23 Lb 
of righteousness, the . : ; . 234 
revealed by external and internal hentai: : «. 237 
Laws, 
of consciousness. : : ‘ : - 214-220 
of nature. ; : : : ; é . 228 
Lecky, Mr., 
on an important achievement of Christianity . yess 19 
Leibnitz, 
on the source of knowledge . : : ; . 148 
on necessary truths : : F : - 154, 158 
on sense and intellect . : 5 : : a Paes 


on the concepts of being and cause. : ‘ - 242 


INDEX. 329 


Liddon, Dr., 
on Pantheism . : . 80 
on the moral element in Hai: : . 3815 
Littré 
his definition of Atheist : : Cotas 
Lotze, 
on the unity of the ego . : ee!) 
Luther, 
at the Diet of Worms . : : puri on 
his view of Christian dogma . ; ; a SEs 
Matter, 
what we know of it ; ; ; ‘ . 231 
Mansel, Dean, 
on absolute morality. : 2 Beg 3! 
Martineau, Dr., 
on retributory happiness and suffering . . 24 
on the meaning of the word “ God” : 35 
on Mr. Spencer’s explanation of the notion sy ene 
obligation : : : : : : ae Lee 
on cause : : 203, 224 
on the an nadie of our Ferkl aan : . 234 
on the condition of knowledge : : : . 240 
on conscience : a out 
on the attainment of i milercil meaning ee the 
moral law : ; : : ‘ : . abid. 
Materialism, 
properly means absolute Atheism . : 2 ol 
Mazzini, 
on Theism and morals . : OY 
Metaphysics, 
definition of : : : : . 144 
Mr. Spencer’s ignorance of. , ; 154, 198, 240 
the ultimate basis of : » Ldo 
the only possible foundation of see atiee ; : ah ote 
the province of, invaded by physicists. . 204-206 
Mill, Mr. John Stuart, 
on miracles . 115 
284 


on mysticism 


390 


PAGE 
Monteil, M., 
his Catéchisme du Libre-Penseur 42-66 
Morison, Mr. Cotter, 
his Service of Man 207-220 
Morley, Mr. John, 
on popular Atheism . 40 
on the “sovereign legend of Pity” . 3804 
Miller, Professor Max, 
on the growth of the Theistic idea 35, 36 
on common-sense philosophy . 118 
Nantes, 
Resolution of the Conseil d’Arrondissement of, on 
Atheistic education 69, 70 
Natural Selection 229 
Neo-Platonists, the 261, 262 
Newman, Cardinal, 
on the inspiration of Scripture 108, 109 
on the spectacle of brute nature 251 
Nihilism, 
and the Kantian Soa eeies 225 
and mysticism 271 
Nirvana 262 
Optimism, 
unchristian . 34 
Palmer, Professor, 
his view of Siifism 263, 264 


Pantheism 
Personality 
Pessimism, 
varieties of . 
Philosophy, 
Cicero’s definition of 
the great problem of 
Atheistic 
M. Renan’s . 


29-31, 49, 244, 265 


- 129, 145, 232, 241, 242, 305 


; 2 
62-65 
102, 104 


INDEX. 


Philosophy—continued. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s - 
two indispensable postulates of 
physiological - 
the Kantian : : : 223-225 
of the Upanishads 
Neo-Platonic 
Sifite . 
of the Christian Masta 
of Nihilistic Pessimism 
essential foundations of 
Plato, 
on the source of the moral law 
his view of ideas . 
his attitude to popular rere ihied 
on ordinary virtue 
Plotinus 
his Reivers on picran Mysticism 
Positivism, 
a variety of Agnosticism 
Public Worship, 
the rationale of 


Reason, 
and the moral law 
held by a certain physiologist to be Picentons 
and miracles : ; 
manifested by the Hone of things 
outraged by Mr. Herbert Spencer 
supplies the key to the problem of existence 
is the constituent element of reality 
and natural selection 
inseparably connected with Will 
the speculative ; 
the practical 
immoral to act against . 

Relativity of knowledge, 
Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of 


PAGE 


265-268 
271 
305 


20 
238 

247 

i 807 
261, 262 


269 
ol 


294, 295 


20 
66 

115 

152 

. 153 
199, 202 
228 

929 

b.2 992 
274, 275 
277-280 
296 


138-145 


INDEX. 


Religion, 


Renan, M., 


PAGE 

what it proposes to do . 2 

is behind all religions 3 ‘ , ‘ 1 
Religiosity : 5 : : : : «2919 292 
a type of Critical Agnosticism : i ' Snr he 
causes of his vast influence . : : : 71-80 

his life as a seminarist . : : : ; 80-88 
renounces Christianity . : ‘ , ; 88-91 


engrafts modern criticism on a religious temperament 92 
regarded the being of God as a question beyond us 96, 97 
his critical method fatal to ethics . : . 98-100 


was another and a better Voltaire . ; ‘ 25108 
in unlearning Christianity unlearned Theism . eif105 
his reasons for renouncing Christianity examined 108-116 
on the desire of humanity for a God-man t # §229 
on the Deity within. 5 : : : 731008 


Richerer, the Rev. Mr., 


on South African bushmen . : 3 : hee 


Robert Elsmere, 


profession of faithin . : : : >) e290 lezo2 


Romanes, Mr., 


on a mechanical equivalent of thought . ; elo 


St. Hilaire, Geoffroy, 


on the succession of species . : ; : SEY 
Schopenhauer, 

on man as a metaphysical animal . : : : 2 

on Pantheism 4 é ; ; a eel) 

character of his Een : ‘ . : a SY 

on the sufferings of the animal world. : aye go2 

on the Neo-Platonists . , : : : day | 
Science, 

the, of religion . . 6-10 

effects of conquests of ie aval) on ola alien: con- 

ceptions . : : 5 : : : 10-15 
ethical : : ; ; AUPE ie 


the word used as a synonym for Ket 50, 205, 208 


IND PX, 333 


PAGE 
Science—continued. 
Mr. Spencer’s definition of . . 120 
physical, dwells in the sphere of the meinen . 201 
antitheistic objections from physical : . 208-214 
theological, proper starting-point in : : eB1F 
Secularism, 
a variety of Agnosticism : : ¢ Fads So 
Seeley, Professor, 
on contemporary want of fixed moral principles 17, 18 
Seneca, 
on the Deity within . : : . 808 
Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 
on transcendental moralists . ? : ‘ 18, 159 
the most influential teacher of Scientific Agnosticism 118 
his account of philosophy . : : a 120 
the foundation of his philosophy . : : werZt 
reproduces the theory of Democritus. ; 128 
his doctrine of Causation . 129- 138 
his doctrine of Relativity of maowledze: . 138-145 
his doctrine of The Unknowable . ~ 145-155 
his ignorance of metaphysics : : 154, 198, 240 
his system based upon assumptions : . 155-157 
his moral philosophy . : . . 158-197 
his Scientific Agnosticism me lenunts to life’ « pete i, 
on necessity. : . . 204 
his antitheistic eerunnent ford the ee of conscious- 
ness . . . : : : . 214-220 
his logical puzzles : ; . 220, 240 


his positive teaching concerning aly Ultimate Reality 
226, 227, 232, 298 


Spinoza, 


his view of consciousness and thought . ‘ . 233 
his account of the concept of duty . 235 
his notion of personality : : : : . 241 
his philosophy mechanical . : : : . 243 
on popular beliefs ; - : : . 247 
on the Divine attributes G : - : Ber 21s 


on Divine and human intelligence . ; : . 241 


334 INDEX. 


Spinoza—continued. 

his conception of God . 
Spurgeon, Mr., 

his preaching 
Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 

on transcendental moralists . 
Strauss, Herr, 

his New Life of Jesus 
Suarez, 

on the moral law . 


Teresa, St., 
on ecstasy 
Trinity, 
the Christian doctrine of 
Tyndall, Professor, 
on cause and physical science 
on Atheists and certain Theists 
on popular theology . , 
on ‘“‘ the error of the priests ” 


Ultimate Reality, the, 
see Chapters IV. and V., passim 
Unknowable, The, 


Mr. Herbert Spencer’s doctrine of 


Voltaire, 
on dogmatic Atheism 
his life philosophy 
on final causes 
on a certain cowherd 


Will, 


the only known primary cause of force 


and Reason . 
World, the, 


what it means in the New Testament 


287 
217, 297-309 


214 
245 
246 
291 


145-155 


37 
104 
210 
220 


231 
232 


33 


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